NETWORK AS A WHOLE

The initial network has 44% female partners – with the aim of 50% to respect gender balance, with both men and women having equal opportunities in all activities (including management, promoting excellence, research, networking and scientific integration). The initial consortium has already the critical mass, expertise and geographical distribution needed for addressing the challenge and objectives. 20 Early Career Investigators were involved (almost 30% of the proposers) but this number will increase once the Action is launched with the opportunity of recruiting other qualified participants (also to reinforce specialists in Process and Chemical Engineering), to address answers for specific problems not possible to be solved within the initial network. The Action has gathered groups dedicated to the development of methodology in organic, organometallic synthesis and crystal engineering, solvent-free preparation of advanced porous materials, providing technological solutions for in situ and real time reaction monitoring, mechanistic investigations of mechanochemical reactions, theoretical calculations, and structural determination by spectroscopic techniques. The network had gathered 2 experts from 2 large companies and 6 experts from Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) devoted to crystal engineering for the pharmaceutical industry. The participation to the network of a ‘Big Skin Care Group’, which is a large Company, and a worldwide leader in grinding solutions on industrial scale and six SMEs, strengthen and demonstrates the high socioeconomic impact and positive effect of the Action, indicating that the consortium has already the right skills for the successful achievement of milestones and objectives.

The IPC institutions in this COST Action will welcome collaboration possibilities and will do all what they can to support the Action. The mutual benefit from their participation stems from: (i) Advanced technologies for in-situ monitoring of the reactions; (ii) Experts in crystal engineering and aging problems with crystals formed by ball milling; (iii) Mechanochemical reactivity using purposely build reactors for synthesis and catalytic reactions performed by ball milling; (iv) Expertise in designing and producing large scale equipment for mechanochemistry, to transfer the lab-scale concept to large-scale facilities, including safety assessment, energy costs and risks assessments of failure by a case-to-case study, and crucial studies for maximising the technological applicability at industrial level. The collaboration of researchers to increase the efficiency of mechanochemical devices through the use of Twin Screw Extrusion (TSE) as an alternative approach for the productions of 20 top seller generics and APIs in general will attract the interest of the pharma industry (see paragraph 2.3.1).