VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH (VDI/VDE-IT) is known as a reliable partner in economics, research and politics for more than 30 years. With our product lines research funding, technology politics, and innovation management, we cover the whole spectrum of the innovation process from research over implementation to market production and utilisation of new technologies.

Our customers in Germany and abroad want to realise innovations in high-tech areas. We accompany them in fulfilling their visions with our competences and experiences in important key technologies like microsystems technology, bio- and nanotechnology as well as multimedia, which are used in key industries such as automotives, mechanical engineering or plant construction. For the individual needs of our customers, we continuously develop new ideas and methods.

Our interdisciplinary team of more than 150 natural and social scientists, engineers and economists is designing the future day by day. They do not only solve the individual customer tasks, but also make a valuable contribution to accomplish urgent economic and social challenges for instance in health care and environmental protection.

EPoSS, the European Technology Platform on Smart Systems Integration, is an industry-driven policy initiative, defining R&D and innovation needs as well as policy requirements related to Smart Systems Integration and integrated Micro- and Nanosystems. In EPoSS a group of major industrial companies and research organizations from more than 20 European Member States co-ordinate their activities in Smart Systems Integration. A main objective is to develop a Vision and to set-up a Strategic Research Agenda on Innovative Smart Systems Integration.

EPoSS brings together European private and public stakeholders in order to create an enduring basis for structuring initiatives, for co-ordinating and bundling efforts, for setting-up sustainable structures of a European Research Area on Smart Systems Integration. EPoSS embraces all key players, public and private, in the value chain so as to

• provide a common European approach on Innovative Smart Systems Integration from research to production outlining the key issues for a strategic European innovation   process

• formulate a commonly agreed roadmap for action (updating, assembling and completing existing material and approaches) and provide a strategic R&D agenda

• mobilise public and private human, infrastructural and financial resources, and

• define priorities for common research and innovation in the future.

The initiative is of immediate importance in view of defining research and technology priorities for the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), for raising more critical mass and resources and for coordinating between different initiatives (national, regional, EUREKA, European public funding, and industry).