Michela Mattaloni is Business and Strategic Relations Officer at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, located in Braga (Portugal). She is in charge of supporting researchers to develop and scale-up their innovation/breakthrough ideas through acquisition of public funding and participation in European collaborative consortia. She deals with the management of EU-funded projects and currently coordinates the PITCCH project.

After her Master’s Degree in Diplomatic and International Relations from the University of Trieste with a major in economics and cooperation development, she has been working at support of European companies, universities and research centres in public funding acquisition for Research and Innovation projects. She followed projects that ranged from specific technology developments, to digitalisation and innovation in processes, to knowledge-transfer facilitation among different actors.

Theme: PITCCH project. The Pan-European Open Innovation Network for Corporate Challenges in advanced technologies (PITCCH) project has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Grant Agreement n. 882463.

Short description: Advanced technologies and Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) are key drivers towards transformation and efficiency of industry. Today, behind every innovation is a vast, complex, international, high-tech supply chain and SMEs are an important driver for this innovation in the industry. Hence, in this context, collaboration between SMEs and LEs can be seen as an important driving force to the competitiveness of the industry at large-

PITCCH project aims to increase the competitiveness of European industries by building a Pan-European Open Innovation (OI) network where Technology Centres act as intermediaries to facilitate the establishment of structured collaborations between Large Enterprises (LEs) as technology seekers with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) as technology providers and this way accelerate the market uptake of advanced technologies through different sectors.

The overall goal is to promote collaborations between LEs and SMEs through targeted actions. Technology Centres will work closely with both LEs and SMEs to better understand the needs and this way identify potential technology providers. A starting point will be the launch of 15 Corporate Challenges (CCs), which will then lead to the implementation of short term projects for technology/product development.