LightMe

LightMe project targets on the setting up of a self-sustainable open innovation ecosystem for the upscaling of industrial processes concerning lightweight metal alloys (aluminum, magnesium and titanium) composites. It is evident that although the last two decades a high number of research projects has been dedicated in the development of new composite lightweight metals for industrial applications (e.g. according to Scopus, more than 1000 publications concerns this field in the last 5 years), only a very limited number of such cases has been finally commercialized and reached the market end users. There are many reasons that these technologies have not been adopted by the market (e.g. lack of funding for further development and upscaling and the unwillingness of end users to adopt in their processes non-validated and nonstandardized technologies) and this phenomenon is usually described as ‘valley of death’. LightMe project aspires to overcome these barriers by offering an open innovation ecosystem, in which technologies that have been developed up to TRL4-5 will be able to be upscaled and validated up to TRL 7.