On Thursday April 14th the Dutch government announced the projects that were approved for the Nationaal Groeifonds (The National Growth Fund, The National Growth Fund | English | Nationaal Groeifonds). The government will be investing €20 billion through the Growth Fund between 2021 and 2025. That money will go to public-private projects that have the potential to contribute to future economic prosperity. Among the projects that have been approved a number will apply nanotechnology to develop solutions for major societal challenges. Of particular interest are NXTGEN HIGHTECH that was awarded 450 M€ and PhotonDelta that was awarded 470 M€.
PhotonDelta is an international ecosystem of organizations in integrated photonics. PhotonDelta aims at developing photonic tech that will tackle societal challenges such as sustainability, create a new European industry, and open the door to a huge range of new applications including quantum computing. The capital from the Dutch National Growth fund and other organizations will be used to build start-ups, scale up production, create new applications for photonic chips and develop infrastructure and talent.
The NXTGEN HIGHTECH program aims at developing a new generation high-tech equipment. This program will provide a significant contribution to the competitiveness, earning capacity and employment of the Netherlands. It will help address some of the larger societal challenges ahead (Health, energy, sustainability, etc.).
With the start of this new round of projects for the National Growth Fund, QuantumDeltaNL was approved for the second installment of funding. Nano4Society already plays a role within the QuantumDeltaNL growth fund and will seek synergies with the newly approved projects.
