Cultural and creative sectors, in Europe and worldwide, have exhibited an impressive performance during recent years. Relevant statistics suggest that the cultural and creative sectors grow faster than their respective countries’ general economy and it is for this reason that they are generally regardedas a vital driver for development. These same industries also contribute significantly to local and regional development. Before we delve deeper into our proposal, it behooves us to define what we mean by cultural creative sectors. Cultural industries generally include printing, publishing and multimedia, audiovisual, phonographic and cinematographic productions as well as crafts and design. Creative industries thus consist of activities drawing on “advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, fashion, film, music, publishing, R&D, software, toys and games, TV and radio, and video games.” The European Commission (DG Enterprise and Industry) defines the cultural and creative industries as follows: “Creative and cultural industries are those concerned with the creation andprovision of marketable outputs (goods, services and activities) that depend on creative and cultural inputs for their value.” Young people are traditionally amongst the most disadvantaged groups in the labor market, as they face great difficulties on their path to employment integration. Youthunemployment rates are high in Europe, as youth unemployment is generally much higher, even double or more than double, than unemployment for the total working-age population (Eurostat, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics). In this context, young people in the age group 20-29 are in need of targeted support in order to have their employability boosted, whereas nurturing their intrapreneurial skills is considered to possess serious potential for increasing their chances for successful school-to-work transition and sustainable labor market integration.Intrapreneurial skills also allow for strengthening their contribution to their employers’ efficiency, competitiveness and, provided this is appropriately projected and appreciated, to improve their value to the firm and, consequently, their employment terms. Intrapreneurship is initially understood as the practice of fostering entrepreneurial behaviors within an established business organization. It emerges from the development and support of initiatives to do new things ordo existing things differently. Furthermore, a young person possessing intrapreneurial skills can also be of value for the society he acts within by engaging in the activities of non-profit organizations of all kinds, public services and social entrepreneurship initiatives. CHESS - Creative Intrapreneurship Empowerment Skills aims at providing an integrated support, tailored to the needs and specificities of young people in the age group 20-29 from the creative industries, who either already possess working experience (currently employed or not), or have never been employed (job-seekers and discouraged individuals), through development and validation of innovative integrated training tools and material in order to: increase their motivation and self-awareness; create incentives foracquiring new intrapreneurship-related skills; promote their efficient and sustainable integration into employment and society. To achieve the above goal, CHESS sets the following objectives: 1. Identification and in-depth mapping of the key intrapreneurship-related competence gaps and specific training needs of young people in the age 20-29 in the partner countries. 2. Elaboration of an innovative training methodology, tools and material, combining the processes of intrapreneurial training and peer support in a single, integrated approach, in order to enhance the employability and social inclusion of young people. 3. Address the needs of young adults by offering training to youth peer support providers and delivering pilot intrapreneurship workshops which will empower youngpeople to be highly-motivated, proactive and innovative. 4. Transfer the project effects to other countries through the set-up of an e-Learning Platform and establishment of an intrapreneurship youth peer support network. CHESS transnational cooperation would allow for developing common methodologies and approaches to the persistent problem of youth unemployment and nonparticipation in education and training in Europe. Thus, among the objectives of the project, the enhancement of the motivation, self-awareness, employability and adaptability of young adults through identification of the existing competences’ gaps and customized training support in a multinational context, takes a central place, as this will allow for creation of opportunities for transnational exchange of information on relevant experiences, success stories and good practices.

High-power laser transmission (HPLT) is one of the most promising wireless power transfer technologies due to its ability to efficiently transmit energy in space, opening the path to new potential applications. The HPLT uses monochromatic light to transfer energy to a remote system via a laser power converter (LPC). Today, GaAs LPCs possess record efficiencies, with values around 69% at intensities around 11 W/cm2. However, they are limited by a strong decrease in the efficiency with light intensity due to the unavoidable series resistance losses caused by their low energy gap (Egap). RePowerSiC aims to develop a novel high-efficiency laser converter for intensities around 1kW/cm2, which will create a breakthrough in HPLT. The project tackles current HPLT limitations using two strategies: i) introducing new materials with higher energy gaps and ii) developing novel LPC architectures. RePowerSiC is based on silicon carbide (SiC) poly types with Egap > 2.3 eV (50% higher than for GaAs) and on innovative device architectures with Rs~10-4 Ohm cm2 (>10 times larger than GaAs). This revolutionary technology seeks to: i) obtain a power converter with an efficiency > 80%, ii) increase the power density transferred more than 1 order of magnitude when compared to the current technology, and iii) the development of a green material manufacturing technology for eco-friendlier and cheaper devices. RePowerSiC project offers a paradigm shift transferring power in the order of kilowatts or higher thanks to its scalability. The larger power density will allow to reduce the LPC surface and the battery size, or even remove it completely. This high-risk/high-gain technology offers new disruptive solutions to power remote systems, being of great interest for satellites, landers, rovers, and in-space energy transmission for innovative applications. It also creates a new technology avenue in SiC materials and opens new domains of application.

A CMOS compatible and ultra broadband on-chip Silicon Carbide frequency comb (SiComb) is going to be demonstrated for the first time by this project. It is achieved by an interdisciplinary collaboration effort of combing unique optical nonlinearity of SiC, growth of low optical loss SiC thin film and fabrication of high quality factor microresonators. As an enabling technology, the on-chip frequency comb is deemed to have far profound impact on diverse areas of science and engineering, including sensing, timekeeping, distance ranging, searching for exoplanets as well as optical communication. For example, the application of this frequency comb in optical communication as a WDM light source will be demonstrated in this project to show the energy saving and the data traffic handling beyond 100 Tb/s. Compared to frequency combs made from AlGaAs, Lithium Niobate etc, SiC has material sustainability advantages: environmentally friendly, biocompatibility, and extended device lifetime and efficiency, which opens new application potentials. In this ambitious 3-years project, SiComb consortium (7 partners from both academic and industrial sectors) with complementary strengths of SiC material growth, device nanofabrication, nonlinear optics and optical communication systems will collaborate to demonstrate the non-incremental and ground-breaking ultra broadband SiC frequency comb chips, with synergy effect at European level. These results will build leading research and innovation capacity on SiC optical devices and applications across Europe and enhance the competiveness and growth of industrial partners. It will also align with European advancement in frequency comb efforts, as well as innovation competence to position Europe in forefront of technologies in the research and innovation. The future market implementation and utilization is expected to have a strong momentum given by the results and stakeholder establishment in the SiComb project.

The project addresses an innovative and radical vision, enabled by a new technology concept that challenges current paradigms of high resolution strain detection for Geoscience and Geohazard monitoring. The goal is the development of a radically new dynamic ground strain measurement technology with an ultra-high resolution of 10-12 that is about two order of magnitude better than the presently available technology. The new technology is based on combining the high performance 3C-SiC material with a high Young modulus (almost 3 times higher than silicon) that improves the sensibility of the actual strain sensor, with fiber lasers for novel all-optical closed-loop operation of the resonator. This design gives the opportunity to use an electronic readout far from the borehole and easily accessible out of the deep drilling. In geophysical monitoring the proposed innovative instrument will allow to detect precisions not obtainable with the current instruments. Ultra small and slow strain transients preceding earthquakes and eruptions could be revealed and both new understanding of the volcano and of the seismology process can be obtained. This new sensor will strongly reduce the cost of the strain sensor and will promote a large impulse in the physics study of both the volcanic areas and of the seismogenic faults. Moreover, the small dimension and the cheap cost will allow to monitor a dense vertical profile of strain along a same hole. Therefore, the project outcomes will have direct implications in forecasting volcanic eruptions and thus improve volcano-seismic crisis management. At the end of the project a start-up of one innovative frontier laboratory for advanced monitoring of dynamic strain associated to volcanic and seismic processes will be done. This “Pico strain Etna Lab” will be the starting point of a new network infrastructure that could support and improve the main volcanic regions and the main faults in Europe.