Interview

The next EU research funding programme should be doubled in size to help fix Europe's growth problems, according to former World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy, who is chairing a group of experts selected by the European Commission to analyse which changes to make after the current programme expires in 2020.

As the European Commission publishes a new plan to fight the threat from drug-resistant superbugs, Professor Herman Goossens, the initiator of the first European Antibiotic Awareness Day, says he is optimistic that scientists and industry can work together to solve perhaps the biggest challenge of our time.

As the European Commission publishes a new plan to fight the threat from drug-resistant superbugs, Professor Herman Goossens, the initiator of the first European Antibiotic Awareness Day, says he is optimistic that scientists and industry can work together to solve perhaps the biggest challenge of our time.

Europe needs to demonstrate to many of its companies the benefits of innovation, according to Professor Luke Georghiou, the vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Manchester, UK.

An on-demand style of farming inspired by the Toyota car manufacturing lines of the 1950s could be the key to improving efficiency on farms, which would in turn lead to cheaper food in European supermarkets, according to Dr Manoj Dora from Brunel University London in the UK.

The first Middle East particle accelerator – officially opened on 16 May – sets an example for young researchers on how a small group of people can build bridges across the troubled region, according to one of the original founders of the project, Professor Eliezer Rabinovici from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, who also holds the Louis Michel Chair at France’s Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

The quantum internet, which connects particles linked together by the principle of quantum entanglement, is like the early days of the classical internet – no one can yet imagine what uses it could have, according to Professor Ronald Hanson, from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, whose team was the first to prove that the phenomenon behind it was real.

Re-engineering immune cells and modifying yeast to produce drugs are just two of the tantalising applications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, says Professor Toni Cathomen, director of the Institute for Cell and Gene Therapy at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Science diplomacy – where scientific collaboration is used to promote broader discussions between countries – enables scientists to help tackle issues such as protectionism and government control over research findings, and could even mitigate the future threat of wars over knowledge and data, according to Professor Luk Van Langenhove, research professor at the Institute of European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

Critical infrastructures such as railway networks, power stations and telephone grids are under daily attack by cyber criminals, according to Georg Peter, who is responsible for the European Reference Network for Critical Infrastructure Protection (ERNCIP), an important part of the EU response to help countries defend their assets.