EUREKA

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EUREKA, often abbreviated as "E!", is a pan-European research and development funding and coordination organization. EUREKA aims to coordinate efforts of governments and commercial companies. It does not partake in, for example, military research. EUREKA was established with the "Paris Declaration" of July 17, 1985, and its principles are based on the later Hannover Declaration, subscribed by Ministers on November 6, 1985.

At this time of writing (October 2006), EUREKA has 38 full members, including the European Union, represented by the European Commission. Among the 38 members, all the present 27 EU Member States are also members of Eureka (the last EU Member State of the EU to join EUREKA was Malta, in June 2006). The Russian Federation joined in 1993.

Contrary to what many seemingly believe, EUREKA is not an EU research programme, but rather an inter-governmental initiative, of which the EU is a member. However, a large cooperation and synergy is sought between EUREKA and the research activities of the EU proper, notably with the EU Framework Programme for Research and Development.

EUREKA Projects are numbered, preceded by 'E!'.

[edit] Specific Projects

E95! was a 730Million Euro HDTV project, which set the worldwide standard for high definition television.
E147! was a 93Million Euro digital audio broadcasting project whose technologies went int Musicam, and which was used as the basis for MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) and used in DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast), and ASPEC (Adaptive Spectral Perceptual Entropy Coding), which was used in a modified form in MP3 audio.
E45! helped to fund the PROMETHEUS project for safer road vehicles, such as through autonomous driving with 745Million Euro.
E127! paid 3.8Billion Euro into JESSI project (Joint European Submicron Silicon) whose goal is to regain ground lost to Asia and the USA in microchips.
E2551! cost 6.1Million Euro for the integration of existing CAD/CAM programs under a common user interface, part of which was paid to Vero Software Plc
E3674! is Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA2), an industry-driven cooperative R & D programme for maintaining European leadership in software-intensive systems. ITEA2 Projects notably include WellCom, OSAMI-E and Easy Interactions.