As part of the ongoing effort to chart and shape the evolving landscape of future and emerging technologies, Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) is launching a public consultation to identify promising and potentially game-changing directions for future technological research.

The research directions that CORDIS is looking for should be more general than an idea for a single research project. They may, for instance, identify a crucial but underdeveloped scientific/technological domain that requires development and structuring; they may stimulate multi-disciplinary explorations around inspiring questions, even non-technological ones; they may propose unifying concepts that can lead to new synergies from previously unrelated research; or they may set an ambitious and concrete challenge that is far beyond the state-of-the-art, the achievement of which would open up radically new possibilities for technology.

Importantly, such research directions to go beyond established approaches are expected, typically through unexpected combinations of disciplines, ideas and people around a common vision. CORDIS also expects to see from them structuring effects on multidisciplinary communities that can tackle all aspects of such a vision in a systemic way. Ultimately such visions should hold the keys to a better future for all, and put Europe on a new road towards future technological competitiveness in the next 20 years.

Therefore, among others, scientists, researchers, engineers, innovators, artists, entrepreneurs and citizens are invited to submit their ideas on such directions of research for future technologies before November 30th 2012.