Over the past months, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised significant challenges in the global educational sector on different levels, calling for the full digitilization and remote delivery of courses and programs, while many institutions are not fully prepared for such situation. Although the global educational sector has attempted to react promptly to such new situation, it is widely accepted that existing solutions have introduced a number of security and privacy concerns, as remote delivery increases the chances for sensitive student and teaching staff data to be exposed to cyber threats. Moreover, digitilizing and not only digitising the education implies adjusting the pedagogical models of the respective courses, to enhance interaction and minimize passive learning, which in turns introduces further challenges in terms of security and privacy.INCIDENCE aims to address those challenges at two levels. On the educational level, by developing and delivering a novel cyber hygiene framework, tailored to the requirements and characteristics of HEI distance learning and teaching, and on the infrastructure level by offering a safe to use eLearning toolkit reflecting on modern eLearning pedagogies and state of the art cybersecurity and privacy advances. Such solutions will empower both teaching staff and students with knowledge on maintaining a high level of cyber hygiene and new capabilities to respond to potential threats that may arise. To support the above, the project will produce four main outputs. A Gamification Cyber Hygiene Training framework, a Scenario Based Learning (SBL) eLearning toolkit, a MOOC course to disseminate, in a wide audience, the framework and toolkit derived from the previous outputs, and a set of best practices and techniques to improve the security of virtual rooms and learning management systems.

This proposal is bringing together R&I related staff by a complementary set of participating organisations that will use multidisciplinary technological approaches to provide a proof-of concept framework for designing and introducing greener practices in pharmaceuticals. Knowledge will be transferred around the core technical activity that will be the introduction of HME as a novel production method, based on AI-ML tools and supported by environmental assessment for greener pharmaceuticals.

European farming is strongly affected by the high-impact of climate change emerging as a major threat on agriculture in Europe and across the world. Even though the digital transformation of agriculture promises to solve numerous environmental, economic and societal problems, and important steps have taken place towards this goal, agriculture sector is the least digitized of all major productive activities. By increasing digitalisation and adopting climate-smart practices in agricultural makes it is possible to produce products with ever higher efficiency and ever lower environmental impact. However, adoption of a climate-smart agriculture is not only a farmers’ concern. It is an interdisciplinary issue for agronomists, ICT experts, farmers, breeders etc. that Higher Education Institutions need to respond by developing new skills and technologies in their curricula.SmartROOT focuses on the preparation of a new Joint Master Degree program in the field of Mixed Farming Systems (MFS) by introducing user-friendly ICT tools to improve the resilience of agriculture subject to climate change. The rational is not only to prepare an international master degree program. It is also to actively involve students in the preparation process, receive their assessment and feedback on the ICT tools and material developed in terms of their operability, the user-friendly environment, the knowledge gained, the extent of international cooperation and the extent of satisfaction of their expectations. It will be a dynamic, inter-active process which ends to a Joint Master Degree program ready to run after the completion of the project.SmartROOT not only aims to prepare the future professionals in the agricultural sector, but also promotes ways for small and medium-sized farms to benefit from the new technologies by introducing and familiarising farmers to digital technologies. Farmers will gain knowledge on methodologies to foster the synergies between agricultural production, climate change mitigation and adaptation. SmartROOT expected results can be summarised in the following lines:1) Build an international Joint Master Degree (JMD) program in Mixed Farming Systems ready to run after the completion of the project2) Actively involve students to the preparation, test and assessment of a JMD prior its official launch3) Enforce students’ insight to perceive the global trends on the agriculture domain in combination to climate change mitigation4) Increase students’ and stakeholders (e.g. farmers) awareness on environment friendly agricultural trends to minimise the climate change consequences5) Bridge the needs of agriculture experts and ICT scientists and familiarise farmers with ICT technological advancements6) Develop open educational and management platforms available to be used by individual farmers and agriculture professionals7) Act as a stepping stone towards the new challenge for HEIs in Europe as described under the Erasmus+ program: to create a network in the frame of the European Universities initiative SmartROOT’s results will be achieved through the following outputs:- O1 MFS e-book - O2 Open Hub for Knowledge Exchange - O3 SmartROOT Virtual Farm Hub- O4 MFS Educational Management Platform - O5 Augmented Reality Learning Environment - O6 SmartROOT Assessment Toolkit and Curriculum preparation1.Introduce the context of CSA and Mixed Farming Systems to HEIs involved through co-design of their curricula2.Educate students to new technological solutions for climate smart agriculture such as such as smart sensors, robots, UAVs, advanced tracking systems, long-range IoT-enabled sensors, middleware and gateways for extending the size of the potential monitoring area, facilitating, thus, data collection and processing of different farming systems at the same time, enabling optimal decisions,3.Develop an Open Access Climate-Smart agriculture platform to foster, support and promote Mixed Farming Systems (MFS), by facilitating the design, the deployment, and the management of crop-livestock-forestry combinations towards sustainable, efficient, and climate-aware MFS systems.4.Develop a continuous training platform, in the national language of each partner’s country, designed for the socio-professional network and based on the content and results of the 3-year project 5.Foster a European network between academia, experienced farmers and stakeholders, to engage end-users and allow exchange of knowledge on best practices on various combinations of mixed farming systems

Energy efficiency lies at the very core of policy interventions for energy security, energy poverty and climate change, while its promoted by technological innovations and investments. However, it seems that these technologies are not adopted by consumers at least to the extent that the assumption of rational behavior would predict. This energy efficiency gap, the difference between expected and realized energy consumption, costs to national economies both in terms of monetary values and emissions. Significant role in mitigating this issue is the exploration of the drivers of individual behavior. There is tremendous opportunity and need for policy-relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the adoption level of energy efficiency programs. EVIDENT proposes several different case studies under the framework of randomized control trials (RCTs) and surveys in order to define the main drivers of individuals’ decision making and to establish new relationships between energy consumption and other fields such as financial literacy. A large number of participants, well stratified samples, innovative design of experiments and state of-the-art econometric models that will be employed in EVIDENT and will contribute in robust estimates and subsequent policy measures for effective policy interventions.

Creative industries encompass a diverse array of sectors, including arts, craftsmanship, media, design, advertising, software, and more. Current research trends often focus on addressing various challenges and opportunities within these industries. One prevalent area of study involves examining the impact of emerging technologies on creative processes, particularly in terms of technological advancements and innovation. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, Internet of Senses and Digital Twins (DTs) are key technologies frequently explored in this context. By leveraging these technologies within a virtual immersive world, there is potential to create an innovative platform that opens up opportunities for novel services in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) domain. ELLIE aims to support CCIs in enhancing their portfolios by providing a universal platform that integrates multiple high-impact technologies like the above and immersive worlds. This platform seeks to facilitate the creation of new user experiences, simplify the development of creative products, and better understand user needs. ELLIE's overarching objective is to offer a comprehensive solution that aids in the delivery of advanced services and expedites the production of new products. This initiative empowers stakeholders to streamline the workflow of service and product creation. Through the combination of the above technologies, ELLIE supports innovative and automated processes, ultimately providing end users with high-quality experiences.