Library FAQ
How might mycelium-based hybrid fermentation affect Europe’s food resilience and autonomy?
By enabling low-input whole-food production from local residues, it could support the EU Bioeconomy and Farm to Fork strategies, shorten value chains, reduce reliance on imported proteins, and strengthen bio-based manufacturing, while requiring regulatory alig...
What are biotech-enabled perennial crops?
Perennial grain crops are multi-year harvest plants that reduce tillage and inputs; biotech-enabled approaches use genomic techniques and AI to accelerate domestication and breeding to close yield gaps with annual cereals.
What are passive daytime radiative cooling and gravity-based energy storage in buildings?
Passive daytime radiative cooling uses advanced coatings to reflect solar radiation and emit heat to the sky for indoor thermal regulation without electricity; gravity-based storage converts surplus electricity into potential energy by lifting masses in buildi...
What are spin-caloritronic materials?
Spin-caloritronic materials exploit interactions between heat, spin, and electrical transport to generate spin currents and magnetic excitations from thermal gradients, enabling solid-state heat-to-electricity conversion and sensing via spin-based mechanisms r...
What are the current limitations of spin-caloritronic technologies?
Efficiencies remain modest, the performance mechanisms are still being clarified, and module-level integration and long-term stability/scalability are at an early stage.
What benefits could energy-active buildings provide for Europe?
They could lower cooling-related electricity demand during heatwaves, reduce dependence on active cooling and electrochemical batteries, support EU building and renovation policies, strengthen construction material supply chains, and improve energy affordabili...
What is inverse design with digital twins for predictive materials manufacturing?
It combines AI-driven inverse design methods for materials with digital twins of buildings and infrastructure so candidate materials are virtually tested and optimised in realistic operational contexts prior to physical manufacturing.
What is mycelium-based hybrid fermentation for whole-food production?
It uses fungal mycelia as structural scaffolds combined with bacteria, yeasts, algae, and/or plant components in a single bioconversion process to produce novel whole-food products with complex textures, flavours, and functional properties from feedstocks incl...
What is novel about combining inverse design and digital twins?
The novelty lies in converging inverse design algorithms, high-performance computing, and physics-based simulation to explore vast material spaces goal-orientedly, and using digital twins as validation layers to assess materials under realistic conditions, cre...
What key effects underpin spin-caloritronics?
Key effects include the spin Seebeck effect (temperature gradients generating spin currents), magnon-related contributions to thermopower, and transverse thermoelectric responses such as the anomalous Nernst and magneto-Seebeck effects.
What recent advances enable coupling passive cooling and gravity-based storage at building scale?
Nanomaterial-based photonic coatings that reflect solar radiation while emitting infrared through the atmospheric window, and adaptation of gravity storage concepts for built environments, enabling reduced cooling loads and local smoothing of energy demand; in...
What recent advances make perennial grains more viable?
New genomic techniques, genomic selection, genome-targeted screening (e.g., TILLING and FIND-IT), and AI-assisted breeding pipelines can shorten breeding cycles and improve trait-selection efficiency, potentially producing competitive perennial varieties withi...
What recent developments are enabling more scalable spin-caloritronic devices?
Developments include bulk and nanostructured spin Seebeck composites (e.g., yttrium iron garnet combined with platinum in 3D architectures), magnetic doping and phase engineering to enhance spin-related thermoelectric responses, and exploration of transverse e...
What techniques are used in inverse design for materials?
Techniques include topology optimisation, generative models, physics-informed neural networks, and high-performance physics-based simulation to identify material formulations and microstructures optimised for specified performance criteria.
How can AI-powered tools and the DBTL approach accelerate materials and reactor design?
AI‑powered tools combined with a Design‑Build‑Test‑Learn (DBTL) approach during proof‑of‑concept and prototyping can substantially accelerate technical and scientific progress in materials and reactor design.
How may autonomous construction robots affect the next five to ten years?
They may standardise automation in construction, drive innovations in prefabrication and 3D printing, reduce material waste and emissions, address labour shortages and safety risks, and require workforce reskilling and policy development on safety, data securi...
How might smart aeraulic systems impact the next five to ten years?
They could set new benchmarks in ventilation design by embedding AI and sensor monitoring into energy‑efficient building systems, reduce health risks from indoor contaminants, and support sustainable building practices aligned with EU objectives; further resea...
How should risks and pollutant exposure across ecosystems be addressed?
Evaluating how pollutants behave and move requires integrating diverse expertise to build robust decision support systems powered by cloud platforms and AI; prevention and addressing waste circularity at the source are the most effective strategies.
What are autonomous robotics in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector?
Autonomous construction robots are low‑TRL systems designed to execute complex tasks (site preparation, material handling, welding, concrete pouring) in unstructured and dynamic environments, using technologies like BIM, ROS, field robotics, and swarm robotics...
What are smart aeraulic systems for indoor air quality (IAQ)?
Smart aeraulic systems integrate AI‑assisted management and real‑time contaminant monitoring to dynamically regulate ventilation, balancing pollutant mitigation and energy efficiency to maintain healthy indoor environments.
What are synthetic data‑driven virtual worlds and hyper‑realistic digital twins in the built environment?
They are ecosystems that combine digital twin technology, synthetic data, and immersive AR/VR worlds to create hyper‑realistic models of buildings and predict lifecycle phases using data from design, IoT sensors, and AI‑generated synthetic datasets.
What are the main challenges in scaling clean deep‑tech solutions?
Scaling clean deep‑tech requires addressing technical and scientific hurdles as well as policy and business challenges, and assembling resilient multidisciplinary teams that engage stakeholders across the entire value chain.
What business practices help overcome commercial challenges for cleantech ventures?
Conducting market intelligence studies, regularly updating product specifications, prioritising scalability from the outset, and engaging in proactive fundraising are essential to overcome business challenges.
What does the Health macro‑area emphasise in this report?
The Health macro‑area emphasises emerging innovations in health biotech, therapeutics, medical devices, and diagnostics that can advance healthcare systems, personalised medicine, disease prevention, diagnostics, and therapeutics aligned with European health i...