U.S.-EU Joint Consultative Group Meeting on Science and Technology Cooperation

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United States and the European Union met today to discuss ways to enhance their science, technology and innovation cooperation. Both sides are committed to the role science, technology and innovation can play in developing the knowledge and technologies that can foster economic growth, create jobs and help solve shared challenges, such as in health, climate change and food security.

Groups led by the Director-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, Robert-Jan Smits, and Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, explored how to advance cooperation in transatlantic marine, maritime and Arctic research, transport research, health research and materials science.

At the meeting, the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Transportation signed an agreement to boost cooperation in transport research. This agreement is designed to foster research into new cross-cutting technologies that will improve our transportation systems and maintain our competitiveness.

The Joint Consultative Group meeting, which takes place under the agreement for scientific and technological cooperation between the European Union and the United States, addressed the following topics:

• Transatlantic marine, maritime and Arctic research, which impacts our understanding of oceans and how coastal resources are sustainably managed and the potential for the rapid expansion of joint work on ocean observation and forecasting, including seabed and habitat mapping was discussed.
• Transport research, concentrating on the development of highway infrastructures, road safety, traffic management, freight logistics and other areas.
• Health research, where both sides discussed joining forces to develop new methods to prevent and treat diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and working together to strengthen science capacity in developing regions of the world.
• Materials science, where the two sides discussed already successful work between the EU, the U.S. and Japan in the area of critical raw materials research and agreed to explore possibilities for collaboration opened up by new U.S. initiatives on advanced materials, particularly in the field of computational modeling.

Assistant Secretary Jones said, "Science is a global enterprise. We look forward to strengthening our cooperation with the EU to improve the lives of our citizens and citizens around the world."

Director-General Robert-Jan Smits added that, "By engaging in more joint research, the EU and the U.S. can produce greater scientific breakthroughs, encourage new industries and provide more solutions to societal problems. We can speed up those breakthroughs by putting our best brains together across academia and industry, and by fostering joint projects at sufficient scope and scale. I am personally committed to this goal."

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SOURCE Delegation of the European Union to the United States