WP 1: Co-ordination activities

• Hold three Steering Group Meetings bringing together the project partners and invited experts to evaluate and monitor the development of the project, and to ensure the workpackages meet their objectives. These meetings will be held in month 1, 13 and 23.
• Establish a multi-disciplinary Expert Working Group of scientists, ethicists and social scientists to examine ethical and societal issues relating to nanobiotechnology and its converging technologies. The Expert Working Group will meet 8 times from month 4 to 15; their reports will feed into the further training and dissemination activities of the project.
• Effectively exchange and disseminate information and good practices by way of an on-line forum linking the members of the main partner organisations and the other participants and an annotated bibliographic database of nanobiotechnology-related ethics research publications, public opinion surveys, researchers, organisations, conferences, reports, “grey literature”, etc. The on-line forum and database will be created during the first months of the project, and will be operative throughout its duration.

WP 2: Horizon scanning workshops

Two workshops bringing together the key players in the nanobiotechnology scientific and commercial field together with the leading ethicists and public communication experts concerned with it to forecast the serious societal and ethical issues likely to emerge. The workshops will be organised by the Nano2Life Network of Excellence and DECHEMA and will be held in months 3 and 9. The workshop reports will feed into the further Expert Working Group and Focus Groups discussions, and will be used as the basis for the Courses and Dissemination Activities.

WP 3: Public opinion focus group discussions

Four focused discussions with small groups of lay people led by a professionally-trained ethicist moderator in west, north, south and east Europe for variation in opinions. The focus group discussions will be organised by the Philosophy Unit of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from months 3 to 15. One of the lay participation groups will be run using the Democs game, in collaboration with the New Economics Foundation. DEMOCS (DEliberative Meetings Of Citizens) is a novel form of lay participation in the format of a card game, around which participants discuss for 2 hours and come to agreed or divergent views on specific policy issues or on general principles. The DEMOCS game will be carried out under the responsibility of SRT.

WP 4: Information & Dissemination

A series of activities designed to raise awareness, augment skills and enhance attitudes to nanobiotechnology among scientists, policy makers and opinion formers:

• Ethics lecturers will make presentations during scientific conferences, hold media interviews and initiate discussions with politicians (10 lectures will be held by leading ethicists). - Three types of publications designed for their respective audiences:
  • issue papers for government officials and politicians,
  • briefing papers for the general public, teachers, media, etc. and
  • ethical briefings for scientists.

  Four papers of each type will be produced in the course of the project.

• Public relations professional to assist with government and media-related activities.
• Regularly updated and user-friendly website to make all of the project’s quality controlled publications and activities available. The website will be created during the first two months of the project, and will be active throughout its duration.

WP 5: Ethics & Public Communication Courses for Nanobiotechnologists

Two 5-day residential courses for research and company scientists to increase awareness of the issues, to encourage, support and train the participants in communicating with the public, the media and politicians about the ethically-related topics in their scientific fields and to discuss models for institutionalisation. The courses will be held in months 12 and 24 and organised by Cambridge Biomedical Consultants in conjunction with the European Federation of Biotechnology Task Group on Public Perceptions of Biotechnology.

WP 6: Consortium management activities

The Co-ordination Office will be responsible for the project's overall management. It will:

• assist the partners in reaching the objectives of their workpackages
• ensure proper cross-fertilisation between the workpackages
• feed back the results of the Steering Group Meetings into the project
• carry out the overall financial- and project-management
• report in a timely and efficient way to the Commission.

(please see also: 6.1 Project Management)

Support to EC Nanotechnology Action Plan and FP7 Technology Platform activities

The European Commission was to publish its Action Plan for Nanotechnology in Spring 2005 but while the draft has been completed by the Commission services its publication has been delayed by the priority negotiations for the Seventh Framework Programme. A Nanotechnology Technology Platform is planned in the Seventh Framework Programme. Activities not covered in the present project will be the subjects of (a) further proposal(s) when the Action Plan is published and the Technology Platform is (being) established.