Technology Transfer

Gaia Raffaella Greco

COORDINATOR

https://www.icar.cnr.it/en/

gaia.greco@icar.cnr.it

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

CNR

https://www.cnr.it/

Introduction

NQSTI aims at effectively coordinating the efforts to leverage on the Italian academic excellence in QST, creating synergies with the private sector toward the development of a competitive and self-sustainable quantum economy.

QST research has a profound innovation potential that can pervasively impact several industrial sectors, both within large companies and SMEs. We shall support QT-based innovation by means of a strong scheme of NQSTI co-funded R&D programs open to Italian companies. Moreover, NQSTI will support entrepreneurship through a QST incubator program that will provide seed funding and services to spin-offs and start-ups, including consulting and financial matching. Finally, patenting and licensing will be encouraged and supported with the coordination of the NQSTI hub, along with a sustained know-how transfer through cooperative research, joint laboratories and prototyping. In all the above actions, in line with the PNRR guidelines, we shall pay particular attention to the Italian southern regions by reserving for them the dominant fraction of the funding.

The involvement of the private sector will be at three different levels:

Large companies. Leonardo Company and Thales Alenia Space are already our partners. They will help steer our low-TRL research towards those directions that are more appealing to the private sector. Other large companies will join the consortium through project-oriented collaborations and thanks to the training of their quantum workforce;
SMEs. They are the main target of our open calls and will have access to our facilities to promote a gradual penetration of QST in their existing R&D;
Spin-offs and startups. We will provide financial support, mentoring, and consulting activities for the creation of new QST companies.

Topics and Objectives

ACTIVITIES	WORKING GROUPS
NQSTI-industry joint laboratories and prototyping GOAL: to favor the exploitation of our laboratories for the strengthening of the innovation capability, process characterization, and product certification	Market trends and use cases GOAL: to actively identificate market trends and use cases; to promote QT to companies
Open calls for industrial collaborations GOAL: to favor the penetration of QST know-how into the existing R&D of large companies and SMEs through project-oriented open calls based on a co-funding scheme	Intellectual Property and Trade GOAL: to boost licensing activities and to create an Italian Intellectual Property Portfolio
QST incubator GOAL: to support the creation of new spin-offs and start-ups with and by project participants. NQSTI will provide mentoring, legal and administrative support	Standards GOAL: to make NQSTI a key player in the identification of international standards
	Strategic Industry Roadmap & Technology Intelligence GOAL: to monitor the status and progress of QT in Europe and worldwide
Quantum Sciences and Technologies Seminars GOAL: to inform Quantum Science and Technology (QST) researchers on Technology Transfer activities, to present market trends and use cases, to analyse IPRs, standards, and to acknowledge QST policy and industry roadmaps

NQSTI-industry joint laboratories and prototyping

Team leader: Gianluca Cavoto
e-mail: gianluca.cavoto@uniroma1.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, Sapienza, SNS, UniBA, UniCAM, UniFI, UniNA

Access to NQSTI facilities will be offered to companies, particularly to SMEs. We intend to favor the exploitation of our laboratories for strengthening the innovation capability, process characterization, and product certification. To this end, NQSTI plans the creation of joint laboratories with companies, where academic and industrial personnel work together. This innovative model aims at merging two cultures, instead of establishing a simple and trivial customer-supplier relationship. In particular:

1. NQSTI and the firm will define areas of common interest. NQSTI will propose the topics that may lead to a technological breakthrough, while the company will identify those that seem promising from a market perspective. The perimeter of the joint laboratories will arise from the comparison between these two perspectives.

2. NQSTI and the firm will establish a medium-long term plan, with at least a two-year collaboration contract. This will respond to both the research needs, in terms of scientific output, and the industrial needs to create the technological basis of a potential market product or service.

Open calls for industrial collaborations

Team leader: Pasqualantonio Pingue
e-mail: pasqualantonio.pingue@sns.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, SNS, Sant’Anna, UniBA, UniCAM, UniFI, UniPR, UniPV

The goal is favoring the penetration of QST know-how into the existing R&D of large companies and SMEs through project-oriented open calls based on a co-funding scheme.

Science-based firms are defined as the organizations where the main source of technology lies in the R&D activities of the companies themselves. The knowledge resulting from research, pure and applied, which is carried out in universities and other public research centers flows, thanks to the collaborative activities carried out, to companies. However, only a knowledge base created thanks to internal R&D activities allows the company to benefit from the research that is carried out in other organizations. NQSTI intends to deploy specific actions for SMEs, spin-offs and startups. Selected companies operating in Italy will be involved in research, capitalizing on their existing know-how and favoring the merging of our low-TRL research with their industrial R&D.

QST incubator

Team leader: Giuliano Muzio
e-mail: muzio@fbk.eu
Partners: CNR, FBK, IIT, SNS, Sant’Anna, UniMIB, UniTS

Startups play a major role in the launch of new products and services originating from scientific research. They can represent an effective trait d’union between scientific discoveries and business ideas. NQSTI will have a specific focus on spin-offs and startups by means of two different actions. Firstly, by encouraging the birth of startups directly from NQSTI laboratories and research activities. Secondly, by attracting towards NQSTI external startups operating in QT or related fields.

NQSTI will provide mentoring, legal and administrative support, and co-funding to stimulate the entrepreneurship of the project participants.

Working Groups

To properly interface with the needs of the private sector we set up different working groups to support all the activities of Technology Transfer. In particular, we will address the following topics:

Market trends and use cases

Team leader: Giuseppe Lombardo
e-mail: giuseppe.lombardo@cnr.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, SNS, UniBA, UniMIB, UniNA, UniPR, UniPV

The goal is the active identification of market trends and use cases that are economically relevant to the national and European industry. Particular attention will be devoted to promoting Quantum Technologies to companies not yet aware of them in order to expand the portfolio of current QT players.

Intellectual Property and Trade

Team leader: Monia Gentile
e-mail: monia1.gentile@santannapisa.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, IIT, INFN, Sant’Anna, UniTS

The goal is to develop best practices in order to boost the licensing of patents and the creation of an Italian intellectual property on quantum technologies and related fields.

Standards

Team leader: Alberto Leporati
e-mail: alberto.leporati@unimib.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, UniMIB

The goal is to make NQSTI a key player in the identification of international standards for QST applications in synergy with the European efforts.

Strategic Industry Roadmap & Technology Intelligence

Team leader: Agostino Lanza
e-mail: agostino.lanza@pv.infn.it
Partners: CNR, FBK, INFN, UniBA, UniTS

The goal is to monitor the status and progress of quantum technologies in Europe and worldwide. We will leverage on the analogous working group acting at the European level, which has developed a living document capturing the state of the art of the quantum ecosystem. Furthermore, we will exploit the European industry-led roadmap across all the major quantum verticals (computing, communication, metrology & sensing, and enabling technologies) to benchmark strengths and opportunities for Italian QST.