The main purpose behind the idea to create and implement the Building the Culture of Social Innovation in Higher Education project was to lay new development paths for European higher education institutions (HEIs) in social sciences and change the current paradigm of teaching entrepreneurship at HEIs. There are currently approximately 840 MA programmes and approximately 200 BA programmes in social sciences offered by European universities and the demand for courses in social sciences is on a steady rise (www.masterstudies.com).Higher education institutions play a significant role in shaping a new generation of social entrepreneurs prepared and driven to solve problems of a dynamically evolving and dangerous world. However, they encounter numerous obstacles, most importantly a lack of a coherent vision for social innovation and a lack of academic staff.Project activities addressed the needs of Central European students, which had been defined through surveys, by implementing social innovation at HEIs through means including: increasing the flexibility of learning pathways, including courses taught by students in their curricula and using massive open online courses (MOOCs). The BCSI project was implemented in a partner consortium that consisted of 4 organisations, including 3 HEIs, namely Collegium Civitas (Poland), the University of Northampton (UK), the University of Iceland (Iceland), and the organisation Ashoka (Poland). The project has THREE ESSENTIAL GOALS:1. To support the implementation of social innovation at European universities (mainly in Central Europe) through developing and mainstreaming useful instruments that respond to the needs of HEIs such as model curricula, step-by-step guides, instructional videos and source books2. To change the model of teaching entrepreneurship by making it more practical and student-oriented through the development, testing and implementation of flexible and project-oriented learning pathways3. To include and promote quality e-learning courses through the development and dissemination of a MOOC in SI design The project was based on the following pillars:1. A comprehensive and consistent implementation concept, which included the ‘design & test’ formula, strong commitment from project partners and the network of affiliated parties and institutions, i.e. so-called ‘heralds of social innovation’, to shaping project activities in a way to ensure that it suits current needs of the target audience2. An innovative approach that combines educational activities addressed at students, a mentoring programme for incubation, using open communities learning in a formal learning format and using elements of massive online education in social innovation3. Strong, complementary partnership, which enabled us to build a complete environment for academic entrepreneurship to grow, including HEIs, business incubators, entrepreneurs and community organisations. The project has impact on the following groups:DIRECTLY on:HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS, through the adaptation and use of learning tools and curricula, redesigning the learning environment, improving teaching quality,enhancing research and increasing availability by STUDENTS by receiving a practical and flexible education and a competent staff of educators and mentors.EDUCATORS, through learning new, innovative, flexible and student-oriented teaching methods and the ability to teach social innovation in and outside a group.MANAGERS, through obtaining a comprehensive tool for building a university strategy for social innovation missions.PARTNERS, through thorough preparation for the implementation and dissemination of social innovation ideas.INDIRECTLY on:SOCIAL INNOVATORS, who will strengthen their networks, among other things, providing SOCIETY with open access to high quality education in entrepreneurship and a new staff of socially-oriented innovators who will work to improve the quality of our lives. The following results were achieved in the project:1. a study was conducted in SI implementation at HEIs2. tools were prepared for educators, mentors and trainers managing HEIs such as manuals, guides, presentations, videos, infographics and animations3. three courses were created in SI for degree programmes in sociology, new media and management4. a 30-hour e-learning course was created in SI design for students and a 40-hour e-learning course for educators5. a summer school was organised for students in SI design6. social innovation trade fairs and video conferences were organised in all partner countries.

The unstoppable proliferation of novel computing and sensing device technologies, and the ever-growing demand for data-intensive applications in the edge and cloud, are driving a paradigm shift in computing around dynamic, intelligent and yet seamless interconnection of IoT, edge and cloud resources, in one single computing system to form a continuum. Many research initiatives have focused on deploying a sort of management plane intended to properly manage the continuum. Simultaneously, several solutions exist aimed at managing edge and cloud systems through not suitably addressing the whole continuum challenges though. The next step is, with no doubt, the design of an extended, open, secure, trustable, adaptable, technology agnostic and much more complete management strategy, covering the full continuum, i.e. IoT-to-edge-to-cloud, with a clear focus on the network connecting the whole stack, leveraging off-the-shell technologies (e.g., AI, data, etc.), but also open to accommodate novel services as technology progress goes on. The ICOS project aims at covering the set of challenges coming up when addressing this continuum paradigm, proposing an approach embedding a well-defined set of functionalities, ending up in the definition of an IoT2cloud Operating System (ICOS). Indeed, the main objective of the project ICOS is to design, develop and validate a meta operating system for a continuum, by addressing the challenges of: i) devices volatility and heterogeneity, continuum infrastructure virtualization and diverse network connectivity; ii) optimized and scalable service execution and performance, as well as resources consumptions, including power consumption; iii) guaranteed trust, security and privacy, and; iv) reduction of integration costs and effective mitigation of cloud provider lock-in effects, in a data-driven system built upon the principles of openness, adaptability, data sharing and a future edge market scenario for services and data.

The GN4-3 is the proposed project for the third Specific Grant Agreement under the 68-month Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in April 2015. This third phase of implementing the FPA is proposed to last 48 months and is a natural continuation of the work in GN4-2, building on the results and maintaining the overall objective of helping to raise European research to the next level, promoting scientific excellence, access and re-use of research data. GÉANT’s world-class, high-speed backbone provides seamless and secure connectivity with 42 National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), reaching over 50 million users in 10,000 institutions across Europe, and more than 100 countries worldwide through links with other regions. The core backbone is capable of multiple 100 Gbps transmission over each fibre link, and Terabit connectivity can be achieved by a single node. The safe and rapid connection of users to each other, to the increasing amounts of data generated by research, and to the high-performance computing capacity required by collaborative research form the foundation of the GÉANT partnership. GÉANT services offer convenient, fast and reliable access to European High Performance Computing facilities, cloud services for the research and education community, access to scientific data and publications and other services from the European e-infrastructure providers, whenever and wherever needed. The structure of the present proposal emphasises updating existing services in line with requirements of the user community. This complements the proposed companion project GN4-3N, an ambitious programme increasing the footprint of the backbone network at the same time as improving its capacity, resilience and flexibility with the aim of offering 100Gbps network access to many more GÉANT partners and significantly diminish the digital divide.

Unsustainable agricultural practices are major drivers affecting habitat and species diversity in agricultural landscapes of the EU. However, peatland, grassland, and species associated with agriculture are of most concern. The ongoing negative impacts of unsustainable agricultural practices emphasize the need for a fully integrated approach between the EU 2030 Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategies. Supporting the EC`s ambition of enhancing biodiversity of agricultural landscapes advanced systems are required to monitor biodiversity features and their changes over time and in space. Such biodiversity monitoring systems will support implementation of result-based policies in the European agricultural landscapes. The BioMonitor4CAP project will design advanced biodiversity monitoring systems mainly assessing diversity of targeted species and habitats to be tested, calibrated, and demonstrated in five European regions representing the major agro-ecological regions of the EU and one region in Peru representing one of the global biodiversity hot spots. The project will combine classical indicator systems that are part of the European monitoring framework (e.g. Farmland Bird Index) with various indicator systems mostly recently developed and applied in form of standalone systems: i) new indicator species (e.g. grasshopper), ii) genetic diversity (eDNA), iii) on-site sensors (e.g. wing beat frequency, acoustic sounds), iv) functional diversity (e.g. pollinators), and iv) various spatial measures. Supporting development and implementation of revised agricultural policies and ensuring rural development the project will involve among multiple stakeholder groups particularly farmers, conservationists, and service provides as the value and/or marketability of public and/or private goods delivered through maintained and enhanced biodiversity and related monitoring systems are hardly understood.