The primary goal of the project was to promote, in a synergy with the project "Expanding Potential in Particle and Radiation Detectors, Sensors and Electronics in Croatia" (PaRaDeSEC), financed within the Horizon 2020 programme, the IRB's existing research infrastructure for the research, development and testing of detectors, sensors and related electronics, said IRB director David Matthew Smith.
He noted that this was the first successfully completed project in Croatia that was financed as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds in the amount of HRK 1.5 million.
Smith said the project was of great importance for the further planning of investments in science through the Operational Programme "Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014-2020".
Science and Education Minister Blazenka Divjak, who attended the inauguration ceremony, said that promoting excellence and innovation was one of her ministry's four important strategic goals in the current period.
She noted that "promotion of excellence... seems easy on paper, but the required change of the system actually requires everyone involved in that system to change."
The minister said the project was a good example of how the Horizon 2020 programme, which is mostly oriented to science and excellence, can be linked with cohesion policies, which help develop countries that lag behind in any sector.
She thanked the project team, headed by Neven Soic, for identifying that link and making it possible to complete the project in record-short time.
The project has made it possible to procure a large number of instruments important for research, as well as remodelling laboratories, thus creating controlled conditions of cleanliness, temperature and air humidity, improving the stability of electric systems and reducing the level of electronic noise, said Soic.