In January 2013 Europe selected the Graphene Flagship as its first $1 billion 10-year research program. Now, almost a year later, the project was officially launched in a ceremony led by Wolfgang Bosch of the European Commission, Karin Markides, President of Chalmers University of Technology, and Nokia's representative Tapani Ryhänen.
The graphene flagship project is led by theoretical physicist Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University. The consortium includes 75 academic and industrial partners from 17 European countries. The project will focus on developing graphene applications in the computing, batteries and sensor markets.
The project will now start its ramp-up phase (October 2013 till the end of March 2016) which will be funded by â¬54 million by the European commission. Then it will enter into the steady-state phase (2016-2020) and the EU will provide a funding of â¬50 million per year in that phase.