NGI TRANSOCEANIC builds on the success of the pre-cursor initiative NGIAtlantic.eu [2020-2023], delivered by the same EU partners, and two USA partners, as a strong and consolidated European Union (EU) and United States of America (USA) Financial Support to Third Party (FSTP) ecosystem with 35 funded EU – USA projects on NGI topics. The main ambitions of NGI TRANSOCEANIC are the following: 1. Comprehensive team approach on involving the key stakeholders from EU and USA in the consortium and already established and expanding EU - USA Twinning Lab, capitalising on their track record, complementarity and networking potential. 2. Having an EU – USA joint calls approach between the EU NGI programme and NSF Internet programmes. 3. Implementation of three dedicated longer term (18 months) open call cycles to be delivered over the 48 months of the project covering expansive NGI topics with €3,200,000 in FSTP funding earmarked. 4. This will be delivered through three different project modalities including projects for advanced technology development, joint demonstrators and joint contributions to standards covering the priority topics of trust and privacy enhancing technologies, data sharing and portability, sustainable and climate friendly internet, electronic identities, internet architecture renovation and decentralised technologies. NGI TRANSOCEANIC has four Objectives, which map well with its workplan: O1: EU - USA Next Generation Internet (NGI) Landscape Framework. O2: Realise EU - USA Open Calls and provide financial support to third-party projects. O3: Twinning activities and support services for the EU - USA stakeholders. O4: To ensure maximum impact and sustainability of the EU - USA NGI activities, and to promote the standardisation and industrial application of the NGI TRANSOCEANIC results.

StandICT.eu 2023’s principal goal is to create a European Standardisation Ecosystem, by: a) launching & managing a robust and efficient facility with € 3,000,000 funding earmarked over 36 months & 10 Open Calls, the StandICT.eu Fellowship Programme; b) empowering contributions from ICT standardisation experts letting their voices be heard, also in the Standardisation Observatory; c) pursuing the training of next generation of ICT standardisation experts, engaging with National Standards Associations & PPPs; d) ensuring hi-level steering of StandICT.eu 2023 by means of an authoritative Expert Group (the EAG) who tap directly into the WGs & TCs of SDOs, tackling EU priorities, challenges & gaps; e) Creating an engaging & influential Foresight Committee (the EUOS-FC) to keep momentum in policy discussions, in-synch with the MSP. StandICT.eu 2023 builds on the success of the 2018-19 StandICT.eu initiative, moving from the existing 700+ community, the grants platform & processes, the standards watch. Moreover, StandICT.eu 2023 is proposed by a lean Consortium, coordinated by the same organisation leading the precursory initiative –Trust-IT Srl (IT), an SME with over 15 years’ experience of managing complex EC-funded projects in ICT– including 2 experienced partners: Dublin City University (IE), a major player in SDO WGs & TCs and in educating future ICT Standards experts, & Australo Interinnov Marketing Lab SL (ES), an SME specialised in stakeholder engagement, with their agile methodology approach. All Consortium Partners bring to the project their impressive international network in ICT standardisation. Principal outputs: The StandICT.eu Fellowship Programme, with 10 Open Calls, 1000+ proposals received, 400+ funded Experts & 50+ External Evaluators; 5,000+ significant ICT Standards uploaded in the Observatory; 10 Webinars, 10 Workshops, 2 Standards Assemblies, 2 ICT Standards Impact Reports, a truly engaged, multi-stakeholder ICT Standardisation Community, well representing SMEs and Academia.

As artificial intelligence (AI) proliferates, hardware systems that can perform inference at ultralow latency, high precision and low power are crucial and urgently required to deal – especially quasi-locally, i.e. ‘in the edge’ – with massive and heterogenous data, respond in real time and avoid unintended consequences and function in complex and often unpredictable environments. Conventional digital electronics and the associated computer architecture is unable to meet these stringent requirements with sub-ms latency inference and a sub-10W power budget, using convolution neural networks (CNNs) on benchmarks such as ImageNet classification. HYBRAIN’s vision is to realize a pathway for a radical new technology with ultrafast (~1 microsecond) and energy-efficient (~1 watt) edge AI inference based on a world-first, brain-inspired hybrid architecture of integrated photonics and unconventional electronics. The deeply entwined memory and processing like in the mammalian brain obviates the need to shuttle around synaptic weights. The most stringent latency bottleneck in CNNs is in the initial convolution layers. Our approach will take advantage of the ultrahigh throughput and low latency of photonic convolutional processors (PCPs) employing novel phase-change materials in these initial layers to radically speed up processing. Their output is processed using cascaded electronic linear and nonlinear classifier layers, based on memristive (phase-change memory) crossbar arrays and dopant network processing units, respectively. HYBRAIN’s science-towards-technology breakthrough brings together the world’s top research groups from academia and industry in complementary technology platforms. Each of these platforms is already highly promising, but by integrating them, HYBRAIN will have a transformative effect of overcoming existing barriers of latency and energy consumption and will enable a whole new spectrum of edge AI applications throughout society.

InDiCo-Global follows-up on the InDiCo project implemented by ETSI, extending and complementing its action in a new set of targeted geographies within low and middle income economies while leveraging methodology, networks and knowledge developed during the execution of InDiCo. The proposal aims at building bridges between technical communities as well as policy makers on topics relating to Digital policies and the related ICT standardisation priorities, with a view to develop mutual understanding of policy, regulatory and technical approaches to ICT/digital as well as to enhance cooperation on ICT standards and seek alignment in policies and regulations, leading to a wider use of EU standards, in turn supporting increased trade and propagation of EU values. InDiCo-Global will therefore: - develop a sound understanding of the policy, regulatory and standardization landscape of partner countries/regions - foster awareness of the European Standardisation System (ESS), its deliverables in the context of ICT/Digital and how they support global acceptance and interoperability, - promote EU policies and standards (developed or in the making) for select ICT/digital technologies and develop cooperation around them, - create and leverage opportunities for capacity building with partner countries/regions While InDiCo was implemented by ETSI only, InDiCo-Global will see all three formal European Standardization Organizations (ESOs) join forces and leverage their unparalleled ability to combine their respective models and reach into all possible standardization-related communities: formal (ISO/IEC/ITU, national standards bodies) or not, national, regional or global, traditional or novel/disruptive (e.g. open source groups). With support of experts in communication, dissemination and exploitation (Martel) as well as handling of FSTP (Trust-IT), InDiCo-Global will be best positioned to contribute to a human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies.

UNLOCK CEI’s ambition is to UNLOCK the potential for accelerating the deployment of the Cloud-to-Edge-IoT (CEI) computing continuum in Europe by focusing on the demand-side drivers and challenges to identify technology-driven innovation and business opportunities driving demand value chains. The project represents the CEI demand constituency; provide insights and guidance to the Horizon Europe R&D projects in this domain; and contribute to a proactive dialogue with the supply stakeholders to encourage the development of an open European CEI ecosystem. It focuses on emerging value chains where investment is needed to foster the deployment of the Cloud-to-Edge-IoT continuum through the forthcoming CEI large scale pilots. This will ultimately foster European autonomy in the digital economy. The workplan is designed to provide early results to feed into the development of the HE Work Programme in 2023-24 based on the ongoing dialogue with the stakeholder ecosystem. The project pays specific attention to data governance issues, leveraging the relationship with industry-driven initiatives such as Gaia-X and CCAM (Connected, Co-operative & Automated Mobility) partnership. UNLOCK carries out a systematic assessment of the state of the open European CEI ecosystem and develop future market scenarios and related market pathways for the development of the open European CEI ecosystem. It will engage with industry stakeholders representing the most relevant industry value chains in Europe for CEI potential demand and develops a productive and effective interface between the demand constituency and the supply side, including the coordination of HE projects resulting from CL4-2021-DATA-01-05, CL4-2022-DATA-01-02, and CL4-2022-DATA-01-03 and Cluster 3 cybersecurity projects. It finally designs and implement a coordinated communication and dissemination strategy running throughout the lifetime of the project to create awareness about the whole of the European demand-side landscape.