Link4Skills is a global research and innovation project on skill shortages. The acronym reflects the objectives of the call by linking for/4 fair skill matching. It embeds 4 processes of responding to skill shortages: re/up skilling of established populations (incl. migrants and inactive women), raising wages, automation and migration. It considers 4 continents: Europe, Africa, Asia and America, where skill shortages and skill flows will be analysed. It develops the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator for stakeholders from employment, vocational training organisations in origins and destinations. Link4Skills will scrutinize: (a) how to identify the existing and emerging required skills in changing labour markets?; (b) how the EU should respond to skill shortages?; (c) how to recruit the required skills from various pools either from the existing workforce (including established migrant populations and inactive women) also supported by automation, and from the workforce from non-EU countries? The project combines data on skill gaps and matching in the EU with analyses about human capital in origins; investigates emerging and established migration skill corridors between EU and India, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine, in order to make enriched inventories of skill partnerships. The project achieves its aims via econometric microsimulations based on EU databases, combining skill supply and demand, and by data collections and stakeholders’ expertise oversees. The knowledge will be nested in the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator (TRL5) which is a Knowledge-Based Expert System, that goes beyond existing policy dashboards. It is an open access system available to public. It is co-created by labour market stakeholders in every partner country. Partners will take care about stakeholders’ involvements in the project, by enhancing tailor-made communication and dissemination. The project will also produce Link4Skill Podcast Series and academic outlets.

During the last decades, supply chains have become huge networks of heterogeneous organisations involved in the manufacturing and delivery of products to end users. The appearance of IoT is transforming every sector subject to be digitalized. After a period of evaluation of the use of IoT, companies are now moving to complete digitalization of their supply chains. Under this paradigm, iNGENIOUS (Next-GENeration IoT sOlutions for the Universal Supply chain) will exploit some of the most innovative and emerging technologies in line with the standardised trend, contributing to the Next-Generation IoT (NG-IoT) and proposing technical and business enablers to build a complete platform for supply chain management. iNGENIOUS embraces the 5G Infrastructure Association (5G IA) and Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI) vision for empowering smart manufacturing and smart mobility verticals. The iNGENIOUS network layer brings new smart 5G-based IoT functi¬onalities, federated Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes and smart orchestration, needed for enabling the projected real-time capable use cases of the supply chain. Security and data management are fully recognized as important features in the project. iNGENIOUS will create a holistic security architecture for next-generation IoT built on neuromorphic sensors with security governed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and tile-based hardware architectures based on security by design and isolation by default. In the application layer, iNGENIOUS new AI mechanisms will allow more precise predictions than conventional systems. Project outcomes will be validated into 4 large-scale Proof of Concept demonstration, covering 1 factory, 2 ports, and 1 ship, encompassing 6 uses cases. iNGENIOUS is formed by 21 partners from eight countries, including three telecom vendors and manufacturers, two network operators, four logistics partners, two universities, three research institutes and seven high-tech SMEs.

The combination of longer life expectancy, evolving socio-economical norms and conditions, and new technologies are dramatically changing life after retirement, and not always for the better. In more and more countries, pensioners find themselves with many years in front of them, some of them likely characterized by reduced physical and cognitive abilities. For older adults, this span of time out of the workforce was traditionally devoted to the role (and source of great joy) of caring for grandchildren. However, this role is fading out because of increased mobility of children, which often live far away for work, love, or other reasons, leading to an increase of loneliness and social isolation. This project aims at rethinking long life and understanding the socio-economical context that can make this period of life more exiting and attractive. The specific angle we take is that of enabling older adults of all ages - and specifically including adults who cannot leave their home or that have reduced cognitive abilities - to learn, grow, interact, and contribute to society through ICT. In other words, we aim at enabling adults to be contributors to societal wellbeing. We generically refer to this group of abilities as life participation abilities, and we focus on these aspects because studies tell us that the ability of interacting and feeling useful and helpful to others is essential to a person’s wellbeing, sometimes more so than health. The multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of the project provides the perfect environment for collaboration and knowledge transfer. As such, it requires the expertise and perspective that only the consortium as a whole can provide. The synergies that we build in the project will help not only in the materialization of the solutions starting from the original problems, challenges and requirements, but they will also foster the growth of research and innovation skills of the researchers and institutions involved in the project.

The ALIEN was an interdisciplinary project on migration, funded by Erasmus+, which developed innovative educational tools for educators that draw from inquiry-based learning and human centred design method and are embedded in multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives to enhance student’s critical understanding and develop their 'research-type‘ graduate attributes. This was done via a series of experimental activities conducted during eight short courses consisting of two one-week events: part one in the form of Living Labs held in Greece, one of the European countries most affected and thus experienced in the recent migration crisis, and part two in the form of participatory Workshops held in Poland, Scotland and Wales respectively by higher education institutions (HEI) engaged in mutual transfer of knowledge and forming interdisciplinary and participatory educational collaborations to enrich their expertise on multiple social science disciplines with stakeholders’ engagement. So, these events not only served to test innovative teaching methods, but also facilitated knowledge exchange and network building between the project's key players: academics and project partners, students as well as diverse stakeholders, including NGOs, public institutions and migrants. The project advanced young people intercultural competences, knowledge and understanding of migration through transnational, multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration. At the same time the project developed lasting engagement of HEIs with local and international migrant organizations as well as regional authorities to build bridges and share knowledge, good practices and raise awareness of issues around migration. Thus, it contributed to greater equity and social cohesion within Europe through a series of knowledge exchange activities with diverse stakeholders (academics, national and local authorities, migrant community organisations).The project scope focused on the theme of migration from the perspective of different social science disciplines including: Economics, Education, Politics/Sociology/Social Policy Social Work as well as Art and Design Practice coupled with ICT. Therefore, materials created focus on a broad understanding of migration from the perspective of different social science disciplines as well as art and design practice represented by students and experts from the partner institutions based in Poland (Polish Japanese Academy of Information Technology, Warsaw School of Economics), UK (Glyndwr University and University of the West of Scotland), Finland (Aalto University) and Greece (Technopolis).The project combined diverse innovative educational methods including: 1. inquiry-based learning, a student-centred approach to teaching and learning based on self-directed or guided inquiry or research 2. multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives to capture the topic of migration from a multidimensional perspective. 3. human-centred design methodology to involve diverse stakeholders. This innovative methodology for teaching and learning has been further developed to combine academic rigor with practical relevance including artistic research, design driven exploration on emerging technologies and materials. Rooted in these methodologies, the project produced the following outputs: Method’s Report on inquiry-based and project-based learning with activities on migration, the Understanding Migration Processes manual for Educators of Social Science, the Understanding People Through Art manual for Educators of Design containing the guidelines on implementing our experimental and innovative teaching methods as well as Modules on Migration including thematic course content from the perspective of particular social science discipline including Economics, Education, Politics/Sociology/Social Policy and Social Work and Workshop and Living Lab scenarios and finally the Community of Practice which is a collaborative addon to the NOMAD open access e-platform with related modules as well as numerous student exhibitions and student projects.The novel educational methods on migration, developed and improved throughout the project lifespan, serve as a guide on how to organise similar, innovative and interdisciplinary courses on migration, and by extension other issues of importance in today’s world. Thus, the project not only enhanced the teaching skills and knowledge of the project team designing innovative modules, but also contributed to the creation of novel interdisciplinary and participatory teaching methods described in the outputs of the project, in particular the manuals. In the longer term this project has contributed to greater equity and social cohesion within Europe through fostering understanding of complexities of migration processes to challenge anti-immigration rhetoric with using the scientific, objective reasoning in the broader context of the impact of migration on the society, economy, and public services.