The official front page is at www.matera.fi but this does not always work. A more direct link is below.

Dr Robert Quarshie, director of the Materials KTN explained recently that the total funding available is 17.5m euros provided by 14 European countries, plus 6m euros provided by the European Commission. The subject areas are: multifunctional materials, engineering structural materials, and bio based and bio inspired materials.

Being a Euro project, it is essential to have one partner in another of the 14 participating countries, when an SME is involved or two partners, one of whom must be in one of the other countries, if an SME is not involved. The participating countries are: Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Solvenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UK.

According to Dr Quarshie, UK led consortia must be industry led and should comprise appropriate supply chain partnerships. He also said that, "All UK participants are advised to ensure that their non UK partners have contacted their national bodies," adding that, "There are a lot of rules". The UK Technology Strategy Board will be putting in £1.5 million, and expects this to support six projects. Dr Quarshie commented that, "The UK university base is very good at applying – UK companies less so."

Help is available from Graham Mobbs, European operations manager at the TSB email graham.mobs@tsb.gov.uk tel 01794 442700 and Dr Alan Hooper, lead technologist advanced materials, also at the TSB, alan.hooper@tsb.gov.uk, same telephone number