EU-North America H2020 project DISCOVERY review

DISCOVERY Review Team (left – right): May D. Wang, Georgia Tech (USA), Jutta Treviranus, OCAD University, Ontario (Canada), James Clarke, Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland), Patricia Abril-Jiménez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain), Maria F. Cabrera-Umpierrez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain), Yolanda Ursa, INMARK Europa (Spain), Sabina Guaylupo, INMARK Europa (Spain), Claudio Caimi, HP Enterprise (Italy), Alberto Leon-García, University of Toronto (Canada), Camille Sailer, European American Chamber of Commerce – New Jersey (USA), Xianshu Zeng, INMARK Europa (Spain)
On 30^th November, 2017, the project organised its second edition of their Transatlantic ICT Forum 2017 (TIF 2017), which took place in the European Parliament in Brussels. TIF 2017 was co-located with the 9th European Innovation Summit and hosted by prominent Members of the European Parliament. TIF 2017 focused on four thematic panels, including dedicated sessions on Funding Mechanisms, Cybersecurity, eHealth and AI and Social Inclusion. In TIF 2017, Mr. Clarke of TSSG was the overall chair along with members of the EU Parliament for two dedicated panel sessions: 1. transatlantic cooperation between main cybersecurity initiatives and platforms and 2. security and privacy challenges for next generation internet topics, including Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Ethics, and Robotics.
The TIF 2017 attracted significant participant attendance by senior-level experts in related fields, with over 100 participants in each session. Overall 42 influential speakers and panellists from the EU (52%), the US (29%) and Canada (19%), with highly-relevant credentials, expertise and global reputation in the subject matter areas, attended the Forum.
At the review in February 2018, the team focused on the assets developed, impacts achieved and how sustainability will occur at the conclusion of the project in the following domains:

• Transatlantic ICT Forum, which will continue in 2018 co-located with the prestigious DEEP (Designing Enabling Economies and Policies) conference in Toronto, Canada in October, 2018, and TIF 2019 will be held in the EU;
• Groundwork for a joint trilateral funding program in inclusive design, which was also the focus of a round table session at the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January, 2018 led by DISCOVERY partner, OCAD University;
• Trilateral partnerships in ICT testbeds to enable sustained experimental collaborative research in IoT and smart cities driven by University of Toronto, US Ignite and a number of EU stakeholders including Waterford Institute of Technology, Trinity College Dublin and Smart (City) Dublin;
• New collaborative relationships in Cybersecurity and privacy common high priority challenge across EU/US/Canada, driven by the Chair of the Cybersecurity Work Group, James Clarke of WIT along with ECSO – European Cyber Security Organisation (EU), NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA) and IN-SEC-M – The security research and innovation marketplace (Canada). This work is being carried forward into WIT’s H2020 AEGIS project;
• Framework for collaboration in eHealth, following up a successful capacity building workshop held in Orlando, Florida, which has led to fruitful transatlantic collaborations and funding opportunities already for follow up transatlantic projects in a number of areas related to eHealth.

The EU, USA, and Canada partners in DISCOVERY have reaffirmed a strong commitment to keep working together and all agreed this review indeed wasn’t the end of the project; instead, it was a beginning of a new collaborative effort in continuing to build upon the valuable assets and impacts that have already been generated together as a successful project team.]]>