There are high expectations by society and policy makers today, that science and research should expand and improve their interaction with industry to solve the grand challenges of our time, like fighting cancer or climate change. To unlock the innovation potential of research infrastructures like particle accelerators or x-ray lasers we therefore need disruptive, faster and rearranged cooperation patterns with industry partners in order to work on solutions for these pressing societal problems.

The objective of CAROTS is to bridge the world of science and industry by establishing the creation of (private) companies – so called Commercial Analytical Research Organisations (CAROs) – that act as an intermediary service provider between those offering scientific expertise and those in need of this expertise. This helps the research institutions because they do not have to provide their own resources for as many industrial issues as possible, it helps industry because they get better and easier access to large scale research facilities, and it helps a balanced development in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) and Europe because less innovative countries also get the chance to offer their own scientific services and thus mitigate the brain drain. By solving research challenges in areas like e.g. New Materials or NanoTech and thus significantly expedite innovation, these companies can create and expand a new market in material science.

The goal of CAROTS is to initiate a test bed in the BSR for a new type of intermediaries between industry and advanced research infrastructures (ARI). CAROTS aims at involving private capital – by investing in CAROs – in the collaboration between industries and publicly owned analytical facilities.

Although a few CAROs already exist in Europe, we see a high potential for additional enterprises of this type. CAROTS wants to improve conditions for this type of industrial research start-ups along with greater visibility, better knowledge transfer and by attracting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists for support.

CAROTS builds on the findings of the previous INTERREG funded projects Baltic TRAM and Science Link.