RESTART presents results and future of the Program to the national Telecommunications community
At the Plenary Dissemination Workshop, held in Bari, Italy on July 20 and 21, RESTART presented to the national telecommunications community – academia, research organizations, industry in the sector and users – the progress of its work.
Six months after the launch of the program – funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the PNRR – M4C2, Investment 1.3, Notice No. 341 of 15-03-2022 of the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) – the event hosted by Politecnico di Bari was an important opportunity to bring together insiders and outsiders to the Partnership, with the aim of presenting the results achieved so far and also collegially define future activities and initiatives.
RESTART Plenary Dissemination Workshop – Room A, Politecnico di Bari
A rich program of talks, spread over two days, alternated general presentations with scientific sessions and Poster & Demo sessions, which helped show the more than 170 participants a comprehensive overview of RESTART.
At the opening of the first day’s activities, Professor Nicola Blefari Melazzi – President of the RESTART Foundation -, Dr. Adele Del Bello – Director General – and Professor Antonio Capone – RESTART Scientific Coordinator and Vice President of the Foundation – provided an overview of the current status of the Program’s progress, followed by presentations by the Mission Referents.
Three main new features were introduced: the Grand Challenges system, the organization of the upcoming Cascade Calls and the presentation of Special Initiatives.
Starting from the ideas and activities of the 32 RESTART projects, a number of proposals were, in fact, collected for the identification of Grand Challenges, presented by Professor Capone: challenges capable of collectively and transversally representing the research conducted by the Program and, at the same time, directly and effectively communicating the concrete impact and value of such research, even outside the restricted community of experts in the field. The Bari workshop was, therefore, an opportunity to collegially present these proposals and gather participants’ preferences.
The subject of the presentation was also an update on the process of organizing the soon-to-be-published Cascade Calls, amounting to more than 32.4 million euros. These Calls will support projects in Fundamental Research, Industrial Research, Experimental Development and Feasibility Studies, with the aim of reaching public and private entities – outside the Partnership – strongly interested in introducing significant innovations in relation to products, processes or services.
In order to address the problem of the gap between supply and demand in the job market in the Telecommunications sector – where there is an ever-increasing number of demands that clash with the progressive lack of human resources needed to meet those demands – RESTART is committed to proposing initiatives to stimulate renewals in university teaching and to attract more students. Challenges, competitions, also exploiting the expedient of Gamification, to reach a target audience of high school students or non-graduates, so that they become more and more passionate about and closer to the world of Telecommunications: these are the special initiatives proposed during the event, which will be continued in the coming months of program activities.
The workshop continued with four scientific sessions interspersed with a Poster & Demo Session, which allowed the 32 RESTART projects to offer the national community an overview of the progress of the work and the main results of interest obtained.
An industry panel and a roundtable discussion with industrial and foreign guests on the challenges of the Telecommunications sector concluded the list of activities that populated the two days of work.
A successful event for those inside and outside the Partnership, made possible thanks to the invaluable organizational support of the Politecnico di Bari, the teamwork of the Program staff, and the fundamental contribution of Professor Antonio Capone, who was at the forefront of the preparation, management and moderation of the two days of activities.
Project Code: PE000001 – PNRR – Mission 4 Component 2 – Investment 1.3