Mário Campolargo

Mário Campolargo is the Director of the "Emerging Technologies and Infrastructures" Directorate of DG-INFSO in charge of Future and Emerging Technologies, ICT based infrastructures for science as well as ICT trust and security, experimental facilities and experimentally driven research for Future Internet. Before joining the European Commission in 1990, he worked for 12 years in the R&D Center of Portugal Telecom as a researcher and manager. He has a Degree in Electrical Engineering by the University of Coimbra, a Master of Science in Computing Science by the Imperial College London, a Post graduate in Management by the Solvay Business School in Brussels and a European Studies Diploma by the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium.

Digital agenda for Europe: supporting research and innovation with e-Infrastructures: abstract

The Digital Agenda for Europe outlines policies and actions to maximise the benefit of the digital revolution for all. Supporting research and innovation is a key priority of the Agenda, essential if we want to establish a flourishing digital economy by 2020.

Scientific research is supported by its infrastructures: technical tools and instruments and socio-economic systems for organising and sharing knowledge. These have been in constant change for many centuries. Key inventions like the microscope or the telescope resulted in huge scientific progress and the invention of book printing in the 15^th century and the organisation of knowledge in research libraries allowed unprecedented access to knowledge.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are the most recent transformational factor in science. They enable close and almost instantaneous collaboration between scientists all over the world and they provide access to unprecedented volumes of scientific information that can in turn be processed on powerful computational platforms.

Today ICT-based infrastructures (e-Infrastructures) have become an essential foundation of all research and innovation.

This is reflected in the European Commission and EU Member States investing in different domains of e-Infrastructures. Together we have been working on connecting researchers, scholars, educators and students through high speed research networks like GÉANT, providing access to shared grid and cloud computing facilities, and developing supercomputing capacity for very demanding applications through the European partnership PRACE. To complement these developments, Europe is sowing the seeds for the emergence of a robust platform for access and preservation of scientific information.

I will briefly present an overview of the latest developments in the context of the European Capacities Programme and the strategy reflections aiming at the development of flexible, reliable, affordable and high-performance infrastructures to serve scientists, scholars and students and make Europe an appealing place to preserve our collective heritage and grow and apply new knowledge.

The European Digital Agenda provides us the frame to deploy a consistent European strategy – in close cooperation with EU Member States - to strengthen the effectiveness of e-Infrastructures in support of science. Without this, European scientists and science will drift to where this perspective is better acknowledged.