From laboratory to industry: artificial intelligence for energy systems and advanced materials

Future of Energy Systems

Problem. Energy storage, fully automated flexible industrial demand and heat can balance variable renewable generation only if they are precisely forecasted and dispatched reliably.

Approach. Data-driven and physics-informed models for forecasting and operating flexible assets, with outputs that operators can check against physical and network limits.

Target maturity: TRL 3–5

Future of Advanced Materials

Problem. Candidate compositions and processing routes are mostly screened by manual, time consuming experiments. Most candidates fail.

Approach. Machine-learning models trained on combined experimental and simulation data that rank candidates before synthesis and report calibrated uncertainty, so that laboratories test fewer, better-chosen samples.

Target maturity: TRL 2–5

Future of Technology Transfer

Problem. Slovakia is classed as an Emerging Innovator, the lowest performance group of the European Innovation Scoreboard 2026. Research in the region reaches licensing, industrial contracts and spin-outs less often than EU’s innovation leaders.

Approach. Methods for intellectual-property management, licensing and research–industry collaboration, and capacity building for technology-transfer offices in Central and Eastern Europe.