CELTIC-NEXT Proposers Day in Istanbul
Maria Barros Weiss
CELTIC Office at Eurescom
barros(at)celticnext.eu
The CELTIC-NEXT Proposers Day in Istanbul on 25th September highlighted the strong interest of the Turkish RDI community in building international partnerships. The audience witnessed inspiring presentations, engaged in interesting discussions, and learned about twelve new interesting proposal ideas.
The event took place at the Istanbul Technology University. It was organized by CELTIC-NEXT and the Turkish Public Authority TÜBİTAK with the support of Sabancı University and Enterprise Europe Network. The programme consisted of interesting keynote speeches, practical information about the CELTIC-NEXT programme and the national funding programmes in Turkey and Spain, a lively panel discussion about the business impact of CELTIC projects, and a session for project proposal pitches.
In the morning, Mr. Tarık Şahin from TÜBİTAK, Ms. Valérie Blavette, CELTIC Chairperson from Orange, and Mr. Rıza Durucasugil, CELTIC Vice-chair from NETAŞ, opened the event and welcomed the participants. After the opening, Ms. Fatma Kesik from Sabancı University presented the opportunities of the Enterprise Europe Network. In the following keynote speech by Mr. Mustafa Eruyar from ISBAK, he shared the future vision of smart cities and presented exemplary scenarios and use cases from the city of Istanbul.
The Public Authority representatives, Mr. Tarık Şahin from Turkey and Ms. Juana Sánchez Pérez from CDTI in Spain, highlighted their support of the CELTIC-NEXT programme and presented the funding opportunities in Turkey and Spain. Guidelines and recommendations on how to submit a CELTIC-NEXT project proposal were presented as well.
Speakers and organisers of the Proposers Day (from left): Hakan Çelik from ISBAK, Rıza Durucasugil, Vice-chair
of CELTIC Core Group from NETAŞ, Juana Sánchez Pérez from CDTI (Spanish Public Authority), Valérie Blavette,
CELTIC Chairperson from Orange, Mustafa Eruyar from ISBAK, Maria Barros Weiss, CELTIC Office at Eurescom,
and Umut Ege from TÜBİTAK (Turkish Public Authority)
Panel discussion
The ensuing panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Işıl Özkan, CELTIC Core Group Member from Turkcell, and focused on the business impact of CELTIC projects. In the discussion, Mr. Burak Görkemli from Argela mentioned the importance of international collaboration and referred to the projects his company has been involved in, namely TILAS, H2b2Vs and SIGMONA.
Mr. Yaşar Burak Savak, from Vestel Electronics, stressed the impact created by awards, based on the example of CELTIC and EUREKA awards received by the E3 project. Mr. Mehmet Dağlı, from NETAŞ presented the impact of the VIRTUOSE project on the different organizations in the consortium, referring to the patent submissions, prototypes and field trials. He also mentioned new and improved products implemented by the project. In addition, he highlighted a start-up on cloud gaming created in Spain, which uses the video encoders implemented in the project. Mr. Mustafa Eruyar from İSBAK stressed the importance not only of the impact on business but also on the quality of living, highlighting results of CELTIC projects like COMOSEF. The social impact created through the services offered by the projects to the public was also recognised during the discussions.
The panellists also discussed challenges of CELTIC projects and international collaborations in general, like for example the size of the consortium or dealing with the requirements of multiple funding agencies. They also pointed out the contradiction between agile processes and short deadlines used by many companies and the long deadlines of project proposals, which are hard to reconcile. Many times the companies’ strategies change during the long duration of project set-up and implementation, which could become a risk for projects.
They mentioned leadership roles in CELTIC-NEXT as beneficial for the organizations, and they especially appreciated the bottom-up character of the programme, which they considered to be a big advantage for the alignment of project work with the companies’ strategies. The impact of project collaborations for academia was also stressed, as well as the importance of having academic partners in projects, proven for instance by the 110 high-quality papers published by CELTIC projects SIGMONA, H2B2VS, and TILAS combined.
Timely technology and quality of the project implementation, as well as a strong coordination and valid use cases were factors indicated as crucial for the success and business impact of the projects.
Proposal pitches and networking session
During the proposal presentations session, twelve potential project ideas were presented to the audience, covering topics like 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, blockchain, automation, and others. The proposed applications of such technologies ranged from a wide spectrum of vertical industries, such as banking, supply chains, self-driving vehicles, assisted living, smart energy, and smart agriculture, just to name a few. The interest of the audience in the project ideas was demonstrated not only by the full room, but also through the lively networking session at the end and the interactions among the event participants and feedback to CELTIC and Public Authority representatives.
Outlook
The Proposers Day in Istanbul was part of a series of events co-organised by CELTIC-NEXT to support interested proposers in finding collaboration partners and building international project consortia. Besides the several proposers days organized in different EUREKA/CELTIC countries, CELTIC also offers Proposers Sessions via web-conference. The pitch presentations presented during all the proposers days or sessions are available for download on the CELTIC-NEXT website.
Panel on the business impact of CELTIC projects (from left): Mustafa Eruyar, İSBAK, Mehmet Dağlı, NETAŞ,
Burak Görkemli, Argela, Yaşar Burak Savak, Vestel Electronics, and moderator Işıl Özkan, CELTIC Core Group
Member from Turkcell.
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