Systematising serendipity for big science infrastructures: the ATTRACT project

Abstract

The potential of big science research infrastructures to make contributions far beyond their scientific purview has long been acknowledged. However, less consensus exists about the specific mechanisms with which such value can realised. This paper describes the ATTRACT project. A novel approach funded with €20 million by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, ATTRACT1 represents a consortium of leading European scientific centres, academic institutions, and industry associations formed to harness their world-class scientific instrumentation technologies towards entrepreneurship within European economies. ATTRACT will award 170 projects centred on breakthrough imaging and detection technologies €100,000 each to develop a proof-of-concept within one year. With the goal of scaling a select few of the most promising projects, ATTRACT will facilitate additional iterations of public and private funding along with relevant commercial and legal support to bridge the gap between supply-push and demand-pull innovation policy instruments. The paper describes the ATTRACT project: its motivation, philosophy, design, and results to date.