The year of RESTART results opens in Palermo
In the setting of the University of Palermo, the RESTART Program celebrated its third “New Year’s Eve” at the Plenary Dissemination Workshop – Innovation to lead the future, the periodic event organized to bring together the Telecommunications community, take stock of activities and plan future directions together.
What is opening is an important year for RESTART – RESearch and innovation on future Telecommunications systems and networks, to make Italy more smART, because it coincides with the moment when all the work done in the past months will be brought to fruition, offering tangible results, not only to the stakeholders involved, but also to society as a whole.
A year that looks to the future, aiming to innovate and renew a fundamental sector such as Telecommunications. Precisely for this reason, innovation was chosen as the central theme of the event held last Jan. 30 and 31, with an attendance of 280 participants who were able to follow a very rich program: 8 technical sessions, 3 industrial panels, about 60 posters presented by young men and women researchers, and an exhibition of demos of the main innovative applications made. The meeting also had two sponsors from the business world: MeasureIT and Allbesmart.
Research in RESTART is proceeding in line with what was planned: many of the projects have already reached a stage where experimental activities allow for demonstrations of particularly interesting scientific results, capable of translating theoretical speculations into something practical, life-changing applications and everyday life.
stresses Antonio Capone, scientific coordinator of the Program, highlighting the importance in RESTART of being able to demonstrate how innovation and collaboration with companies can transform ideas into real market solutions, change the way business is done and create value for the ecosystem.
An innovation particularly felt in the two-day workshop, as confirmed by Ilenia Tinnirello, professor at the University of Palermo and General Chair of the event
there was a clear desire to push the results toward a broader goal and try to enhance all the aspects of innovation that our Program, in various capacities, is pursuing, from technological innovation to innovation concerning applications, but also social innovation. We really have a very diverse group: along with engineers, we can count on the participation of figures such as, for example, sociologists and jurists, and it is a great surprise to find us all together enriching each other with contributions of a different nature.
That of RESTART’s 32 projects is, in fact, research that proceeds in a synergistic and transversal way, pooling knowledge and expertise, thanks in part to the systematization promoted by the “Grand Challenges.” 13 clusters of challenges that aim to stimulate the collaboration of researchers in different fields, with the goal of producing results that are not just the sum of those of individual projects, but represent a collective action with a high potential for impact towards the industrial world.
The Program is also working towards a more general purpose, identified by Grand Challenge 0 – Creating a vision of the future evolution of telecommunications in Italy and abroad, which represents the “mother” of all challenges, because it is linked to the prediction of what will happen in the transformation process of the sector. In this regard, a first white paper was published in 2024 that allowed to frame the current telecommunications ecosystem, proposing a model describing the state of the art, to be used as a compass for the design of the different possible future scenarios, which will be the subject of the second white paper, scheduled for publication in April.
The future of Telecommunications also depends on the results that RESTART is already currently producing, not only in strictly scientific terms, but also in terms of stakeholders. The Program has reached 116 partners, including 27 from the original consortium and 89 who entered through Cascade Calls.
What is interesting is that half of these 116 partners are industrial in nature, so they are small, medium and large enterprises. Special attention has been paid to the involvement of startups, with 9 already engaged and the goal of reaching 30-40 by the end of the Program. RESTART has also dedicated a substantial portion of the funding to the South, going in the direction of bridging the territorial gap as well, for a share of 31 percent.
comments Adele Del Bello, Director General of the RESTART Foundation and Program Research Manager.
A year of results that opens with important milestones already achieved, including in terms of employment, as Nicola Blefari Melazzi, president of the RESTART Foundation, points out:
We have recruited more than 320 researchers, who will constitute the next generation of resources committed to doing research in Italy, the academy and industry.
It will be important, in addition to accompanying the path of these resources, about 33 percent of whom are female, to look for prospects for their future. In this direction, Professor Blefari Melazzi continues,
in April we are going to have a conference in Rome, which is called “Telecommunications of the future,” where we are going to discuss together with the researchers these perspectives, also to try to direct them, giving advice and listening to their needs and their comments on this first phase of work that they have done.
RESTART is not, however, only scientific research: in fact, it has six other cross-cutting missions, covering innovation, training, laboratories, doctoral programs, support for start-ups and spin-offs, and communication. These initiatives are important, because they help to ensure that the work done can have a real effect in the years to come.
Special emphasis was given to Mission 3 – Innovation & Technology Transfer, which was chosen as the focus of the plenary meeting. A key mission at this stage of the RESTART Program, because.
the ambitious goal is for the national technical and scientific telecommunications community to generate innovations that can be transferred into commercial products and solutions, which companies can then bring to market.
as highlighted by Roberto Sabella of Ericsson, head of the Mission, who describes himself as
satisfied with the outcome of Mission 3, as numerous innovations have emerged,22 so far recorded, mainly from academia, often in collaboration with the business world.
Many of these innovations have attracted the interest of companies, and about half are already pursuing technology transfer paths. Without RESTART’s support, collaborations of this kind, between universities and companies, would not have come about. Sabella explains
In this sense, we have set in motion a system of cross-inspiration, co-generation of innovation, and we are in the technology transfer phase. The important thing is that this is just a starting point, because even after the RESTART program concludes, this process will continue and hopefully also increase the volume of collaboration between universities and business.
As evidence of this, the Plenary Dissemination Workshop had a large industrial presence, with three dedicated panels featuring guests from some of the leading companies in the industry, discussing key issues for the future of Telecommunications. The discussions revealed enthusiasm and satisfaction among the industrial partners, who recognize in RESTART the opportunity to access know-how and high-level human resources from universities and, at the same time, the possibility to test innovative solutions and develop new applications in synergy. These elements represent an important driver for increasing the competitiveness of companies and Italy in the Telecommunications sector.
This opens a year that will represent the conclusion of a journey, but one that will hopefully leave a legacy capable of going beyond the time horizon envisioned by the program, with positive impacts not only for the technical ecosystem, but also for society as a whole.