On January 22nd, the X4HPC Network held its 2025 Expert Committee meeting

The Expert’s Commission is a consultative body that ensures the suitability of the Network strategy. Made up of independent experts, the commission debates, advises and proposes formulas to foster the technology transfer of HPC technologies, as well as to maximize the impact of the network.

In 2023 and 2024, this body already helped with the elaboration of standardization guides and best practices for IPR and licensing models in the field of HPC, thanks to the addition of expert Malcolm Bain (partner of Across Legal and one of major experts in the field of Open Source SW and Open HW protection).

This 2024, the X4HPC added to the Experts commission composition other expert profiles:

  • Carles Grau (CEO at Grau Innovation Consulting, ex-CEO of the MWC Barcelona Foundation and member of several advisory boards) – expert in technology, digital business development, innovation and B2B sales/marketing.
  • Oscar Sala (VP and Head of DeepTech Program at 3XP Global, ex Director of The Collider Program and CEO at Spaceapps Spain) – expert in innovation, technology transfer, and digital transformation, venture capital, deep tech and B2B sales.
  • Sébastien Lefebvre, Partner at Elaia – expert in deep tech investment
  • Mariona Sanz, Head of Innovation and Business Development Unit at BSC

It was also attended by Anna Escoda, director of Tech transfer office at Bsc and director of the X4HPC and Maria Rosés, manager of the X4HPC.

The meeting focused on debating and gathering advice from these different profiles, by asking questions such as:

    •  Advice from an investor profile: How do you think the scientific output from X4HPC can be better communicated to investors to facilitate pre-analysis of investment opportunities?
    • Advice from a sales/marketing profile: How can X4HPC better promote its tech portfolio to align more effectively with corporate needs?
    • Advice from an IPR expert: What type of licensing strategy would help the scientific output from X4HPC better meet market needs? Is an open-source strategy a viable option?
    • Advice from an Innovation & Business Development Director expert: How can we encourage the research centers within X4HPC to be more proactive in sharing their technologies to strengthen and diversify X4HPC’s portfolio? How can we better collaborate with corporates?

The Agenda of the day was the following:

  1. Brief review of the network’s main activities and impact in 2023-2024
  2. Training – review and proposals
  3. Expert assessment – review and proposals
  4. Other programs in the ecosystem – review and proposals
  5. Fairs (particular focus on 4YFN/MWC 2025) – review and proposals
  6. Internationalization and European Deep Tech Ecosystem – review and proposals
  7. Agreements & next steps

 

It was a very interesting and enriching discussion. Some key takeaways and next steps were agreed upon, especially focusing on 2025 activities and the new proposal of Xarxes that will be submitted this year. Improving communication of projects/technologies, finding best practices in other European innovation ecosystems or linking the project to the new BSC AI Factory were some of the topics discussed.