CONTEXT: In a data economy, businesses have large amounts of data available that enable them to make data-based decisions (Data-Driven Management, “DDM”). This applies not only to tech companies, but increasingly to data-intensive SMEs and Start-ups. In many cases, automated systems (e.g. Artificial Intelligence) are used to prepare or make business decisions on the basis of data. However, accessing and analyzing data requires a broad spectrum of competences and skills: Technical understanding and organisational knowledge is required. Furthermore, accessing and analyzing data requires a broad spectrum of legal knowledge, as companies and employees need to know how data can be used in accordance with legal provisions (IP rights, data protection etc), which unintended side-effects occur (e.g. discrimination) and which legal risks (e.g. liability) DDM entails and how they can be avoided. Therefore, a competent handling of automated systems and related technologies for DDM constitutes a key competence in a data economy.OBJECTIVES: DDM4SME develops and provides education on potentials, challenges and (legal and societal) risks of DDM. Knowledge will be provided on the legal, societal, technical and organizational dimension and on how DDM can be implemented in order to avoid risks and drawbacks (e.g. liability and discrimination). Thereby, the objective of DDM4SME is to provide education which fosters employability of learners and increases competitiveness of businesses. Furthermore, the education provided by DDM4SME shall fister constructive, but critical thinking towards autonomous systems.PROJECT PARTNERS: DDM4SME is conducted within a transdisciplinary research consortium involving researchers from various research areas (legal experts, IT experts, didactic experts and management experts). The project consortium consists of the Danube-University Krems (DUK, lead), the University Göttingen (UGOE), the Masaryk University Brno (MUNI) and the Kazimieras Simonavičius University (KSU). ACTIVITIES: The project activities comprise a large portfolio: In total 5 transnational partner meetings, 5 multiplier events on national level (including a final conference for an international audience), one HE Staff Training Event and one transnational intensive study program (Summer School on DDM4SME) will take place in course of the project. Furthermore several activities within the development of the Intellectual Outputs include activities addressing stakeholders or academia (e.g. focus groups, the Project Advisory Board, the External Peer Panel). All activities including an external audience are vital for the success of the project (e.g. in terms of feedback and suggestions to improve the project outcomes) and unfold multiplier effects.METHODOLOGY: The curriculum for the master’s program (IO1), the didactic concept (IO2), the course modules (IO3) and the handbook (IO4) will be developed in a co-creation process involving researchers from all project partners. This guarantees that DDM als a multifaceted issue is dealt with holistically. Furthermore, members of the target groups (students interested in higher education on DDM) and relevant stakeholders (SMEs, Start-ups) will be included in the process of developing education in focus groups and intensive study weeks. This reflects the learner-centered approach of DDM4SME, as the curriculum, the didactic concept and the course materials will be designed around learners’ needs.RESULTS and IMPACT: The main results of DDM4SME will be the 4 Intellectual Outputs: IO1: Curriculum for a Multidisciplinary Master Program on DDM in SMEs and Start-UpsIO2: Guideline on Didactics, Evaluation and Sustainable Improvement of the Master ProgramIO3: Full-Featured Course Modules and Teaching ResourcesIO4: Transdisciplinary Handbook on “DDM in SMEs and Start-ups”By providing comprehensive education on DDM, the main impact of DDM4SME will be to strengthen competences of learners to implement data-driven decision practices in business processes (specifically in SMEs and Start-ups), which also strengthens their employability. As risks of automated decisions (e.g. legal violations, algorithmic discrimination) are integrated into the education, DDM4SME also contributes to compliance with legal rules and principles related to the the use of automated systems and also to a cohesive society. By providing higher education, DDM4SME also provides SMEs and Start-ups well-educated employees, which fosters their competitiveness. LONG TERM BENEFITS: The results of the project have a strong impact beyond the project term as the project partners are committed to create a modulare master program that is eligible for ERASMUS MUNDUS JOINT MASTER. In case that a follow up funding as EMJMD cannot be achieved, the project partners will implement the curriculum (IO1), didactic concept (IO2), course modules (IO3) or parts thereof in their study programs. Joint Masters or Double degrees initiatives are envisaged.

The MS FSCC project brings five leading Southeast Asian higher education institutions in agriculture and life sciences from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia to build a joint master’s degree on the topic of Food Security and Climate Change. These HEIs have been working together within the Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) since 1989 and have a concrete experience of exchanges in Science and Academic programmes but never reached the level of building a joint degree. The MS FSCC was designed on the model of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees in Europe. It aimed at responding to acute needs in the professional sector that developed recently, where each individual university may not have all the disciplinary resources to address such topics at the highest (postgraduate) level. This difficulty is generally increased when the professional targets of the learning objectives lead to multidisciplinary orientations of teaching and research. A consortium of universities sharing common learning objectives and organising the mobility of students according to their individual academic strengths was assumed to be in a better position than individual Universities to produce graduates relevant to the market needs. This is the case with Food Security and Climate Change to prepare graduates to work at implementing the commitments of the member countries at the last Paris Conference on Climate Change, while taking into consideration the challenges of food security linked with the recent implementation of the ASEAN integrated market. This corresponds to a new professional challenge in the area of agriculture in SE Asia. The UC has the necessary skills to address this challenge, but individually, none have all the skills needed to properly address the training needs in this domain. Building a joint degree and using mobility to get the best offer in the region may better address that new challenge rather than what they would do individually. Simultaneously with the development of the synopsis of joint MS FSCC programme was the challenge of offering a dual/double degree, an innovation that the UC had never done before. By building common rules to govern within the MS FSCC: exchange/mobility of students, mutual recognition of courses between pairs of Universities within the UC, organisation of summer schools to offer courses to accommodate all students, option to have one semester mobility in Europe to complement the local supply of courses, FSCC-wide quality assurance system recognised by each of the collaborating Universities, and joint evaluation of master thesis between academic teams, Departments, Faculties of the different co-graduating Universities, the UC has experimented agreements that lead to building other post graduate joint programmes, a major institutional innovation in the SE Asian academic world. Whereas building this joint degree was much inspired by the European experience of the Erasmus Mundus programme, it required several adaptations and innovative rules in the participating Universities’ academic systems. These adaptations took more time than initially expected as it had to be accepted in five Universities in parallel and in real practice, for real students, in a real joint programme, and not just in theory. These innovations have been clearly identified, and at least they have been addressed in the case of a first collaborative programme, run with three successive cohorts of students.

Collaboration and sharing of resources is critical for research. Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures (AAIs) play a key role in enabling federated interoperable access to resources. The AARC Technical Revision to Enhance Effectiveness (AARC TREE) project takes the successful and globally recognised “Authentication and Authorisation for Research Collaboration” (AARC) model and its flagship outcome, the AARC Blueprint Architecture (BPA), as the basis to drive the next phase of integration for research infrastructures: expand federated access management to integrate user-centring technologies, expand access to federated data and services (authorisation), consolidating existing capacities and avoiding fragmentation and unnecessary duplication. The main objectives of the AARC TREE project are to: (i) Capture and analyse new Authentication and Authorisation interoperability requirements (as emerging that support integration use-cases across the thematic area) and provide a landscape analysis of AAIs services (including gaps) in the RIs represented in AARC TREE (ii) Define and validate new technical and policy guidelines for the AARC BPA that address RIs use-cases. This will improve the integration of RIs across thematic areas and increase the ability of RIs to support emerging needs (iii) Expand the number of research communities that can implement the AARC BPA and/or the AARC guidelines, by providing a validation environment and toolkits. At the same time support existing AARC communities in adopting new guidelines (iv) Bring RIs, e-Infrastructures and relevant stakeholders together to align strategies to integrate new technologies, better interoperate and share resources across thematic areas and produce a compendium and recommendations for different stakeholders

Magnetotactic bacteria orient in magnetic fields with the help of a dedicated organelle, the magnetosome chain, which acts as an intracellular compass needle. In this way, their swimming, powered by their flagella, is guided by the magnetic field; the bacteria can be understood as self-propelled compass needles. Magnetotatic bacteria often live in the sediments of aquatic environments and thus swim in a milieu characterized by pores and obstacles. In this project, we use a combined theoretical and experimental approach for the quantitative characterization of magnetotactic motility in complex environments. We investigate how directional motility is achieved in such an environment and how these bacteria balance robust control of directional motion with directional flexibility to navigate through such a medium. We will trap individual bacteria in circular confinement using a microfluidic trapping approach and track their motion to study their interactions with the confining walls. Based on these observations, we will use simulations of a theoretical model to make predictions for the behavior for other confining geometries and for the presence of magnetic fields of different strengths and orientations. We will characterize different species of magnetotactic bacteria, which have different organizations of their magnetotactic apparatus and exhibit different magnetotactic behaviors. Thereby, we will obtain information about the different strategies of dealing with confinement and obstacles hindering directional motion. We will iterate experiments and modeling to have a quantitative match of the experimental results and fully predictive simulations. In addition, we will make microfluidic channels with obstacles mimicking the sediment the bacteria live in and study the swimming of magnetotactic bacteria through these channels. We hypothesize that weak magnetic fields will enhance the motion through the channel by providing directionality, while strong fields can results in trapping at obstacles and hinder the motion. We will test this idea, both experimentally and in simulations. Using the simulations, we will study the interplay of magnetic guidance, interactions with the obstacles, fluctuations, and active orientation changes in such environments and design interesting arrays of obstacles that will subsequently be tested experimentally. We aim at deducing and testing navigation strategies in complex environments and corresponding design constraints on the magnetotactic apparatus by comparing again different species as well as by an analysis of the population heterogeneity. The combination of our experimental approaches and theoretical description will lead to a comprehensive quantitative picture of magnetotactic motility in complex environments and more generally shed light on how directional control of motility can be balanced with directional flexibility to navigate complex environments in both microorganisms and microrobotics.