Disrupted neuronal connectivity and synapse dysfunction can manifest clinically as a range of emotional, behavioural and cognitive symptoms that are common to, and often overlapping in, mental disorders (MDs) such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Antidepressants and antipsychotics used to treat these symptoms are often ineffective in ND patients and treatment-resistance is common in MD patients. To tackle the burden exacted on society by untreated psychiatric symptoms, Synapsing will generate the first trans-European clinical collection of clinical, neuroimaging and socioeconomic data from >3000 patients from MD and ND clinics for use in Synapsing and beyond. Synapsing aims to introduce a biological framework for MDs through a search for blood biomarkers to engender a faster, more objective diagnosis and reduce misdiagnosis with NDs. To minimise the use of inefficient treatments across MDs and NDs, Synapsing will develop blood biomarkers to objectively monitor therapeutic response and to stratify patients who would benefit from therapeutic intervention. To guide the development of more effective treatments, Synapsing will model synapse dysfunction using post-mortem brain tissue and induced pluripotent stem cell derived neurons from MD and ND patients. To prevent social disparities impacting on healthcare, Synapsing will identify modifiable socioeconomic risk factors for psychiatric symptoms in >2000 individuals with a lived experience of mental health issues and MD and ND patients recruited across Europe. Recommendations for evidence-based policy initiatives targeted towards reducing these risk factors will be disseminated to EU council agencies. Expected outcomes include better understanding of these under-researched conditions, revised clinical guidelines to better diagnose and manage patients and strengthened knowledge and care networks.

ELOQUENCE is focused on the research and development of innovative technologies for collaborative voice/chat bots. Voice assistant-powered dialogue engines have previously been deployed in a number of commercial and governmental technological pipelines, with a diverse level of complexity. In our concept, such a complexity can be understood as a problem of analysing unstructured dialogues. ELOQUENCE’s key objective is to better comprehend those unstructured dialogues and translate them into explainable, safe, knowledge-grounded, trustworthy and bias-controlled language models. We envision to develop a technology capable of learning by its own, by adapting from a very data-limited corpora to efficiently support most of the EU languages; from a sustainable computational framework to efficient and green-power architectures and, in essence, that may serve as a guidance for all European citizens whilst being respectful and showing the best of our European values, specifically supporting safety-critical applications by involving humans-in-the-loop. Overall, ELOQUENCE’s project considers building on top and to improve of prior achievements in the domain of conversational agents, e.g. recently launched and public-domain Large Language Models (LLMs), such as chatGPT (e.g., more recent versions), or LaMDa most of them developed in non-EU countries. While including key industrial enterprises from Europe (i.e., Omilia, Telefonica, Synelixis), ELOQUENCE will validate the developed technology through (i) safety-critical scenarios with human-in-the-loop for security-critical applications (i.e., emergency services in call centres) and (ii) smart home assistants via information retrieval and fact-checking against an online knowledge base for lesser risky autonomous systems (i.e., home-assistants). ELOQUENCE will target the R&D of these novel conversational AI technologies in multilingual and multimodal environments and demonstrated in several pilots.

Establish in Cyprus a Science and Research Center to: a. Undertake competitive interdisciplinary research of excellence for the development of innovative tools and exhibits for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) Education and Science Communication. b. Promote science literacy and capacity building through informal STEAM Education using interactive Science Technology and Engineering (STE) exhibits, demonstrations and contact with scientists. c. Contribute towards a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) culture through open schooling, Science Communication and outreach activities. d. Provide teacher professional training for integrating in-house developed ICT tools in formal STEAM Education and promote endorsement of new STEAM educational strategies and curricula. e. Serve as a hub to communicate and disseminate to public and industry innovative technology research outcomes and evidence-based practice to policy makers and provide a platform for entrepreneurship for supporting public engagement in entrepreneurship and start-up companies. Research excellence and innovation will be attained through “Teaming” collaborations, exchange visits and networking with EU Centers of Excellence in ICT research and STEAM Education, and with renowned Science Centers and the public and private universities of Cyprus. The Center will work with academics, expert in various fields, and employ staff and researchers with expertise in Computer Science and ICT, STEAM Education and Science Communication. An entrepreneurship unit hosting a prototyping platform for innovation will be used for dissemination of research outcomes, advising innovative patents, promoting start-ups and establishing links with the industry. The Center will be a unique landmark with a positive long term impact on innovation, Cyprus economic growth and Education, in accordance with “Europe 2020”, and adhering to the objectives of the Teaming Phase I Call.

The 21st-century teaching and learning system is evolving to respond to global challenges of economic competitiveness, a greater focus on educational equity, and a demand for impactful educational solutions and enhanced return on investment. Yet, education is an unpredictable industry. If one is launching a startup in the Educational Technology (EdTech) niche, s/he needs to be prepared for the specific challenges that will face while attempting to enter into this market. At the same time the EdTech industry has exploded on a massive extent; the competition is huge and to stand out one must be unique in multiple ways. Nevertheless, the European EdTech entrepreneurship ecosystem needs a lot of support since it is less advanced than the one in the US or China. The ENTER project is at the forefront of this challenge, by improving the quality of entrepreneurship education around EdTech, bringing together academic and industrial partners with entrepreneurial experience and with expertise in educational technologies and learning pedagogies, aiming to empower undergraduate & postgraduate students, faculty members, researchers, educators as well as university alumni to become EdTech entrepreneurs. An innovative curriculum and a set of complementary services, such as a network of experienced mentors and the Learning Innovation Hubs, will be created for helping the target audience to improve their entrepreneurial skills, through recognising business opportunities and validating their business assumptions in the EdTech space. The ultimate goal of ENTER is to improve: a) the skills and knowledge of young entrepreneurs interested in the EdTech market, using best practices from pedagogy, technology and entrepreneurship, b) the quality of innovative & impactful EdTech products and ultimately c) the number of EdTech startups in Europe that grow exponentially, for the benefit of diverse learners and organisations addressing real learning/teaching needs and the EU economy at large.

"The high school students are facing new challenges for career and life management arising from the complexity of current global economy, industries, and technology change. The main purpose of a comprehensive educational and developmental guidance in a school setting is to promote and enhance the learning process, to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills and values to make informed decisions for successful transition from school to further education or work. School counselors are in a great position to assist students through the post-secondary planning process and to help in resolving problems they face in regards to career choice. The goal of SUCCESS Project was to create an innovative training package for school counselors based on principles of Positive Psychology (PP) that would be successfully applied to support students after their graduation from high schools. The SUCCESS Project was oriented to enhance school counselors’ competencies in developing student’s employability skills based on PP principles.According to the results and responses gathered during focus groups and quantitative research in each partner country the SUCCESS team were able to pin out the 10 Employability Skills that are of outmost importance and need to be acquired by students in order to sustain and thrive a successful career path. These skills are: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Self-Presentation, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Decision Making (Problem Solving), Negotiation Skills, Teamwork, Communication and Engagement (Flow). All of the Employability Skills suggested above, can be taught, developed and nurtured through the use of a variety of activities that derive from Positive Psychology. The 4 pillars of Positive Psychology that can support and cultivate the aforementioned desirable outcomes are Positivity, Character Strengths, Resilience and Meaning (Meaning of life). Overall, 80 activities were developed across the four pillars (modules), amounting to a total implementation time of approximately 60 hours. Activity types ranged from personal written tasks based around reflection and self-awareness to more active exercises including role playing, cooperative tasks and etc., in order to create a flexible training package. Each activity was developed using the following template structure: Activity Title, Duration, Skills to be enhanced, Activity Type (Individual/Group/Homework), Activity Level (Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced), Materials (if required), Implementation Instructions, Evaluation & Reflection. The SUCCESS Training Package along with the SUCCESS Online Training Platform were tested on trainers who afterwards had training sessions with 25 school counselors in each project partner country. The SUCCESS Training Package consists of the “Guide for SUCCESS Handbook” and “SUCCESS Handbook: Activities & Instructions"". The SUCCESS Training Package was prepared in English language and translated in 3 languages (Greek, Lithuanian, Italian). The online SUCCESS Training Package (Guide for SUCCESS Handbook and SUCCESS Handbook: Activities & Instructions) is accessible through the SUCCESS Project website (https://www.successlearning.eu/training/).Information about SUCCESS On-line platform, Guide for SUCCESS Handbook and SUCCESS Handbook were sent to schools, school counsellors, project stakeholders and other professional organizations and networks. The main target group of the SUCCESS Project was school counselors, who had possibility to access new knowledge and develop new skills that would assist them in progressing at both professional and personal level. 125 school counsellors from project partners’ countries who participated in pilot trainings evaluated the SUCCESS Training Package very positively. The counsellors agreed on the fact that it was important to implement this kind of training package in schools as beneficial for both, students and counsellors. In order to disseminate the tangible outcomes of the Project, the multiplier events have been conducted in all project partner countries. During the multiplier events, the final results and outcomes of the Project and the online educational platform were presented to the attendees. The content of the multiplier event has been evaluated highly positively. All 240 participants expressed their intention to share the SUCCESS resources with other professionals and were strongly motivated to implement the presented tools in their career guidance work with students."