New concepts and strong participation

Heinz Brüggemann
Director Celtic Office
brueggemann(at)celticplus.eu

The first Celtic-Plus Event from 29 to 30 March 2011 in Heidelberg was attended by around 200 people. In addition to high-level speeches and impressive exhibitions also a new concept for the discussion of new proposals was introduced.

The Celtic-Plus Event was this year organised in Heidelberg, the home town of the Celtic Office. It was the first event of Celtic-Plus but, actually, it was also the sixth Event of the Celtic cluster organised so far.

Interdisciplinary topics at Proposer’s Day

The conference began on the first day with the Celtic-Plus Proposer’s Day. Unlike earlier Information Days the proposer’s day was organised in two different tracks, with the main intention to combine related proposals and, in particular, proposals related to other research domains, so they could be jointly discussed.

This new concept worked quite well. In total around 30 proposals were presented and discussed in the two session tracks “Get Connected” and “Digital City & Digital Home”. The biggest challenge for proposals focusing on inter-disciplinary research will be the organisation and integration of those projects within the different research domains. First concepts and ideas were discussed and the first practical implementations are expected to demonstrate how this could be realised in the most effective and efficient way.

Clean-Tech

At the main conference session the new research challenges and the new strategies were the main topics of the presentations and discussions. Dr. Eli Opper, the Israeli EUREKA Chairman, presented an overview on the EUREKA status, new financing instruments and priorities to address the “Grand challenges”, including climate change, security, energy, and environment, with an emphasis on clean technologies. Namely the EUREKA Clean-Tech Action is supposed to support R&D collaboration in the field of clean-tech through a multi-disciplinary approach; in particular, involving several related clusters on
■ environmental technologies
■ water technologies
■ alternative and renewable energy technologies
■ energy management and saving
Involved clusters are in particular: ACQUEAU, EUROGIA+, and the ICT clusters Celtic-Plus, ITEA2, and CATRENE.

Future Internet

Another important focus for Celtic-Plus is related to the Future Internet research activities. Luis Rodriguez Roselló, Acting Director for Converged Networks & Services at the EC’s Information Society and Media DG, presented the concepts, structures and strategies of the Future Internet PPP programme. As it may be possible that additional and interesting use cases, which could not be considered within the FI-PPP budget, may also be proposed as Celtic-Plus projects, further links with FI-PPP may be established.

Interdisciplinary ­presentations

There were three additional high-level presentations related to the new inter-disciplinary research concepts of Celtic-Plus. Luis M. Correira from the Technical University Lisbon presented applications and challenges on Smart Cities, Stig Goethe from Power Circle presented the particular requirements and challenges on Smart Grid, and Alfredo Viglienzoni from Ericsson gave insights on the concepts related to Digital Village.

In a panel session high-level representatives of the Public Authorities from France, Spain, Finland, Israel, and Turkey discussed the priorities of national research and funding of future ICT projects.

Project exhibition

An extremely important part of the event was the exhibition, where ongoing and recently finished Celtic projects presented their results and achievements. In total 17 very interesting and impressive project demonstrations presented the current results and some preliminary new products of Celtic projects. Some of the products may come to the market in a relatively short time. This again proves the high impact of Celtic projects on the positioning of the European ICT industry.

Further information about the Celtic-Plus Event is available on the Celtic-Plus website at
http://www.celtic-initiative.org