Europe needs to step up its efforts and strengthen its very own security capacities to secure its digital society, economy, and democracy. It is time to reconquer Europe’s digital sovereignty. The vision for Europe can only be to join forces across Europe’s research, industry and public sector and to include all talents not just those that have representation in the EU mainstream or are within big organizations. Diversity and inclusion are keys for success. Europe has incredible coverage and talent in the area of IT and cybersecurity. The area of cybersecurity is geographically fragmented across Europe for competences, and often also technically fragmented with problem-specific development of security solutions. There is no doubt that excellent research exists in Europe. Nevertheless, it is a fact that this research does not result in IT products and solutions that contribute to the European Single Digital Market. On contrary, a lot of research, also financed by EU ERC grants, is tested on real data in large US companies that cooperate with them. Europe has to and is already rethinking this strategy. CONCORDIA addresses the current fragmentation of security competence by networking diverse competences into a leadership role via a synergistic agglomeration of a pan-European Cybersecurity Center. The vision of CONCORDIA is to build a community a strong cooperation between all stakeholders, understanding that all stakeholders have their KPIs, bridging among them, and fostering the development of IT products and solutions along the whole supply chain. Technologically, it projects a broad and evolvable data-driven and cognitive E2E Security approach for the ever-complex ever-interconnected compositions of emergent data-driven cloud, IoT and edge-assisted ICT ecosystems.

The unstoppable proliferation of novel computing and sensing device technologies, and the ever-growing demand for data-intensive applications in the edge and cloud, are driving a paradigm shift in computing around dynamic, intelligent and yet seamless interconnection of IoT, edge and cloud resources, in one single computing system to form a continuum. Many research initiatives have focused on deploying a sort of management plane intended to properly manage the continuum. Simultaneously, several solutions exist aimed at managing edge and cloud systems through not suitably addressing the whole continuum challenges though. The next step is, with no doubt, the design of an extended, open, secure, trustable, adaptable, technology agnostic and much more complete management strategy, covering the full continuum, i.e. IoT-to-edge-to-cloud, with a clear focus on the network connecting the whole stack, leveraging off-the-shell technologies (e.g., AI, data, etc.), but also open to accommodate novel services as technology progress goes on. The ICOS project aims at covering the set of challenges coming up when addressing this continuum paradigm, proposing an approach embedding a well-defined set of functionalities, ending up in the definition of an IoT2cloud Operating System (ICOS). Indeed, the main objective of the project ICOS is to design, develop and validate a meta operating system for a continuum, by addressing the challenges of: i) devices volatility and heterogeneity, continuum infrastructure virtualization and diverse network connectivity; ii) optimized and scalable service execution and performance, as well as resources consumptions, including power consumption; iii) guaranteed trust, security and privacy, and; iv) reduction of integration costs and effective mitigation of cloud provider lock-in effects, in a data-driven system built upon the principles of openness, adaptability, data sharing and a future edge market scenario for services and data.

The physical laws of diffraction generally limit the spatial resolution of optical systems, being about 200 nm for light in the visible range. Within ChipScope we want to overcome this limit by developing the scientific and technological basis for a completely new approach to optical superresolution, based on semiconductor nano Light Emitting Diode (nanoLED) arrays with individual pixel operation. The core idea of ChipScope is to use spatially resolved illumination instead of spatially resolved detection for achieving microscopy functionality with superresolution. This will be made possible by developing chip-based nanoLED arrays with light emitting diode (LED) dimensions and distances much smaller than the wavelength of visible light (i.e. below the Abbe's limit). Thus, ChipScope will develop the highest resolution LED arrays in the world. These new devices will enable novel science in general and superresolution in particular. Making optical superresolution ubiquitously available is expected to lead to foundational breakthroughs in virtually every field of research and technology that makes use of optical microscopes. Within the project, the first chip-sized “ChipScope microscopes” will be developed, tested, calibrated and compared with state-of-the-art microscopy systems. During the course of the project, a game changing real-time imaging device for scientific investigation of living tissue will be used to study the in-cell mechanisms in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) syndrome as a proof-of-concept of the new science and applications that will follow.

DISPROP aims at improving the current aerodynamic and aeroacoustic analysis and design capabilities for large aircraft operating with distributed propulsion (DP) and propeller arrays. This will be done by generating a high-quality, industry-relevant experimental database using 2D and 2.5D wing sections equipped with propeller arrays. Using this database, the capability of existing CFD and CAA codes will be updated in order to better predict the relevant aerodynamic and aeroacoustic interaction phenomena occurring between the wing and the propellers slipstream. Parametric studies will be conducted to identify most promising configurations. This 30-months 2,7M valued project will consist of four phases. After a preparatory phase, where relevant geometries will be selected based on their high potential for DP, two to three wing geometries will be highly parametrized in Phase 1 and investigated by both CFD and medium-scale wind tunnel tests (WTT). Then, in Phase 2, the most promising configuration will be wind-tunnel tested in large scale at DNW NWB to generate aerodynamic and aeroacoustic experimental database that will be used to validate CFD and CAA simulations. In a subsequent exploitation phase, the combined numerical and experimental database will be extrapolated to full-scale 3D geometries based on the advanced Power Balance Method. The analysis and design tools matured and validated within DISPROP will enable the development of new aircraft configurations with DP and closely integrated propellers. Operating with a drastic increase in overall efficiency compared to conventional aircraft, such configurations contribute to the CS2 objective of reduced CO2 emissions. The DISPROP consortium is composed of internationally recognized experts in CFD and CAA modeling, academic and industrial-scale WTT (the best facility in Europe for aerodynamic and aeroacoustic aircraft validation), as well as aircraft designers experienced in DP.