Together with 10 major materials producing and materials processing companies (including AGC Flat Glass, Agfa Gevaert, Arcelor-Mittal, Bekaert, Recticel, Solvay, Umicore) and with the support of the Flemish Government, Agoria Vlaanderen, Sirris and the 5 Flemish universities founded the Strategic Initiative Materials ‘SIM’ on June 10th 2009.

SIM is a platform to finance and direct joint strategic research by universities and companies for the research areas

• “materials for energy & light”,
• “durable & sustainable structural materials” and
• “tailored nanomaterials in their environment”.

The Flemish Government has recognized SIM as a strategic Research Centre (SOC) and will fund 15 MEuro in the first year (and increasing to 20 MEuro annually from 2010 on). Research programs and projects will be set-up based on open calls for proposals. The industrial partners will contribute in cooperative industrial basic research projects. These projects will be supported by IWT within the O&O instrument.

The basic ambition of SIM is to strengthen the economic position of the materials producing and materials processing industry in Flanders on the medium to long term.

Flamac, an existing research platform focusing on high throughput experimentation and molecular modeling was integrated into SIM. More information can be found at www.flamac.be

The Key Performance Indicators for the SIM initiative are attached.