Coimbra Sustainability Summit

Get to know founders and key players from multiple technology & innovation hubs in one of a kind summit. A unique opportunity to initiate and establish new collaborations.

Cycle of Webinars, May 18th - 29th - 2020

As Agents of Innovation, we need to do our part in addressing the societal challenges the planet faces and at least try to address some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations in 2015. Our vision is to debate how new technology interceptions can support decent work and economic growth (goal 8) by creating new partnerships to achieve those goals (goal 17). In the first edition of this event, we choose to address Health (goal 3) Agrifood (goal 2), Manufacturing (goal 9) and Sustainable cities (goal 11).

The CSS is an event financed by the DIATOMIC project – Digital Innovation Hubs boosting European Microelectronics Industry. DIATOMIC aims to establish a sustainable ecosystem to facilitate AME/SSI-based innovation in the Health, Agrifood and Manufacturing sectors, all of which are under-digitised and of prime importance for society and the economy. SMEs and mid-caps from all sectors — the appropriate innovation actors to conceptualise novel digital products, processes and business models — face several challenges. They have limited knowledge of what smart electronics and smart systems can do and is organised together with the projects Block.IS, ENRICH in the USA and M-Sec.

The Cycle explores growth opportunities at the intersection of four areas of digitalisation that are considered fundamental for growth: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity, trying to demonstrate how combining elements of these technologies can tackle the needs of the four application domains (Health, Agrifood, Manufacturing and Sustainable cities).

 

Cycle of Webinars Format

The agenda of the event tries to follow a journey from the strategic view of sustainable development goals, the concrete needs that need to be addressed in the first week, how the key enabling technologies chosen can be used to contribute to address the needs and how these developments can be funded in the second week. The goal is to inspire participants in guiding their innovation activities, foster economic growth, while contributing to the satisfaction of the SDGs.

Plenary sessions focus on cross-cutting issues. P1 focuses on the importance of the UN SDGs, the EU Green Deal, and how both will drive public policy. This plenary aims to bring, from the research side, what are the SDGs which are the focus of the CSS and explain what the big challenges for the policy and green deal and some examples of the specific technologies are will be provided. Furthermore, it will be examined how targeted government policy, including public-private partnerships, can help build modern communications and Internet infrastructure to facilitate growth, development, and innovation. P2 will try to provide a broader perspective on the SDGs by addressing how partnerships and ethical issues must be considered from inception when trying to define new solutions. P3 will give the floor to speakers from the academy, business, and industry, from different economic sectors, to share their experiences on how organisations are currently: using the 4 KETs (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain and Cybersecurity) to grow their business, addressing the SDGs while developing new technological solutions that create more value to society and making investments that leverage on opportunities related to KETs. In P4, we focus on Public Policies, Funding landscape & Open Call opportunities. This plenary session aims to present the position of public policy in digitalisation and its links to technology, innovation, sustainability and the Green Deal. Speakers include representatives of the European Commission, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Health (TBC). Following the P4 speakers’ presentations, a series of funding opportunities of EU funded projects will be presented, providing cascade funding in the four application domains. This includes both currently open calls but also calls that are planned to open until the end of 2020. Funding opportunities that will be presented include calls of the Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) initiative and of a series of projects such as Market4.0, Block.IS, DEMETER and BlockStart to name a few.

 

INTRASOFT International, through its RID department is one of the core organisers of the event as coordinator of the DIATOMIC project that is organising the CSS but also through the projects Block.IS and ENRICH in the USA that are co-organisers of the event and in which INTRASOFT International is a partner.

Furthermore, Mr Raimund Bröchler is the co-chair of the event, and Mr Babis Ipektsidis is the moderator of Session P4, where the European Commission, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Health are speakers. In the same session also the projects Market 4.0 (coordinated by INTRASOFT Intl.) and DEMETER will present their cascade funding opportunities.

Following the P4 session, a webinar session about internationalisation in the US will follow organised by ENRICH in the USA.

 

Authors: Raimund Bröchler, Babis Ipektsidis