The E-CAM Scoping Workshop “Building the bridge between theories and software: SME as a boost for technology transfer in industrial simulative pipelines”, organised in May 2018 at the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa, brought together top-level scientists of the E-CAM community with expertise in statistical mechanics, multi-scale modeling and electronic structure, and representatives of pharmaceutical and material industries, with the objective to identify the major gaps which still hamper a systematic exploitation of accurate computer simulations in industrial R&D. Special attention was given to the role of SMEs devoted to simulative software development, and several software vendor SMEs were present at the meeting.
The meeting highlighted the role of software vendor SMEs as a key link for the uptake of modelling in industry. They can play an increasingly important role not only in translating the science developed in academia into a proper technological transfer process, but also in building a scientific bridge between the industry requirements in terms of automation and the new theories and algorithms developed at an academic level. There was also a consensus that EU funded Centers of Excellence for Computing Applications, such as E-CAM, can provide an opportunity to enhance the expertise and scope of software vendors SMEs.
Read the full report here.
