Six large public-private consortia in which about a hundred companies, technology, and research centers, institutions and professional groups are integrated will work on innovative projects that pursue the challenge of improving health or combating polluting emissions, the scientific missions.
Asturias is the first region to launch the Scientific Missions program, following the model of the national call to a public-private collaboration system aligned with European innovation strategies. The Scientific Missions of Asturias are developed in five areas: agri-food, energy, industry 4.0, health and active aging and heritage. Asturias is considering financing some of the pilots of the scientific missions and has stated that it would like to fund at least one or two projects of each line in future calls.
ASINCAR, Asturian agri-food cluster, participates in the Alimes Project (Personalized food for healthy aging), whose purpose is to increase the percentage of people who live independently for longer and with a higher quality of life, an idea in which food plays a fundamental part. It also takes part in the Agri-Food 0 Emissions Project, which aims to reduce, reuse and valorise waste from agri-food and forestry production so that they can be used in other production processes.
The ICT Cluster is part of the eHealth project, whose main objective will be the application of digital technologies to prevent the appearance of chronic diseases with the highest prevalence in the region.
For its part, the Cluster of Advanced Manufacturing of the Metal Industry of Asturias, METAINDUSTRY4 is present in the Hoja de Ruta (Roadmap) Project for the deployment of the hydrogen industry – H2, whose objective is to train Asturias in the entire hydrogen value chain from the technological and industrial point of view
The Minister of Science, Innovation and University of the Principality of Asturias, Borja Sánchez, expressed his opinion at the meeting held on July 8 at La Laboral. He stated that through these scientific missions it will be possible to verify the research being done in Asturias, highly related for example to Artificial Intelligence, 3D printing, food and personalized medicine or hydrogen. In addition, he considered as “incalculable” the value created with the synergies between the participants.