PASPACK 4.0 aims to produce an innovative and sustainable bio-based food packaging from Mediterranean agri-food by-products and waste, especially pomegranate (peel and seeds) and dates (date pits, molasses), to contribute to addressing the dilemma of food waste and the overuse of plastic in food packaging. This will be achieved by harnessing innovative technologies, mainly those of fourth industrial revolution (I4.0) innovations, such as smart sensors, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing, and radio-frequency identification (RFID), to develop a sustainable alternative smart food packaging with the following features: to be able to reduce food waste and plastic food packaging material; to be active to maintain food quality and improve shelf-life; to be sustainable and cost-effective, obtained from agri-food by-products and waste, using emerging green extraction and processing technologies; to be flexible and suitable for application to different food categories; and to be intelligent to monitor food quality and safety and tell the consumer about freshness of the packaged food. Our innovative approach will be based on polysaccharide-cellulose nanocrystals matrix, designed from date and pomegranate by-products and waste, enriched by bioactive compounds to enhance the antimicrobial and antioxidant capacity of the developed packaging film. An anthocyanin-based pH-sensitive indicator will be developed and RFID tags will be implemented to monitor food freshness. Moreover, blockchain applications will be used to provide relevant information about the traceability of food along the supply chain, constituting the originality and novelty of the proposed packaging solution. The smart packaging will be tailored and adopted to improve the shelf-life of highly perishable products, such as fish, meat, and cheese. The project is subdivided into seven work packages with well-defined goals and tasks, which falls perfectly under the multi-actor approach given the strong and diverse set of stakeholders (17 partners from 9 Mediterranean countries) involved in this project.

The 2STEAM project aims to develop an Open Schooling framework by using Open Source digital and programming tools in order to create innovative pedagogical methodologies for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) education based on learners’ motivation, engagement and creativity. Creativity is a key competency in the framework of the twenty-first century education and is considered a competency-enabling way to succeed in an increasingly complex world. Coupled with digital skills, the learners, when committed to a creative programming pedagogy, are able to develop a modelling activity “using technology-based environments to build representational models of the phenomena that are being studied” (Jonassen and Strobel, 2006). The 2STEAM project will build on the power of programming and creativity to enable science education to be empowered through a 4-objectives strategy: 1. The creation of a methodology for digital-based Open Schools, democratic and opened to the whole society, enabling to develop new set of skills, 2. The promotion of a creative and innovative learning approach, building on the “Inquiry-based” and “Evidence-based” practices to ease active participation in the academic or private scientific research process i.e. citizen science strategies. 3. The creation of strong and structured models for cooperation developed within “Exploration Hubs” to enhance outdoor schooling practices, to ease discussion, exploration and innovation potential based on the commitment of various stakeholders (parents, schools, universities, museums, public communities, startup and industries). 4. The development of a novel school framework based on gender equality, well-being of learners and inclusion, especially by developing an interdisciplinary approach through programming, developing the potential of science education to solve major societal challenges, beyond the pure technical vision. To reach its objectives, the 2STEAM project will gather 10 to 12 partners, from diverse fields of expertise, including research partners developing the methodological framework, schools providing the needs of the learners, associations, museums and NGOs specialized in dissemination of scientific culture, SMEs and Industries developing digital open source solutions, and makerspaces to provide novel tools within the Exploration Hubs. Together, these partners will develop a 3-stages work plan to reach the desire impacts of 2STEAM based on: 1. A STIMULATION stage enabling the upgrading of stakeholders’ skills especially teachers and professors in STEAM: Several tools, guidelines and short training will be developed and gathered within a 2STEAM platforms, aimed at disseminating, as creative commons, all the outcomes of the project, 2. An INCUBATION stage, gathering from the civil society, the research world and the industrial sectors, real life projects to show the potential of the 2STEAM approach in solving societal, scientific and social challenges, 3. An ACCELERATION stage, where the citizens themselves will develop their own scientific projects, using all the skills, contents and tools acquired through the 2STEAM project.

The objective for the creation of a European network is to establish new relationships and strengthen existing ones between European researchers with complementary skills in the field of photochemistry, photo-physics, and applications of nanostructuration with photoactive molecules. The goal is to increase the knowledge of basic photo-mechanical properties and design supra-molecular systems of this family of reversible photoswitching molecules as azobenzene molecules in order to optimize their properties to develop new functional materials and implement this molecule into new application areas. Scientific innovations will emerge from the quantitative understanding of new developments and mechanisms of reversible photoinduced molecular movements. The potential impact regarding the implementation of advanced molecular systems to be exploited in the future of smart materials, molecular switches or biological processes activated by light. Scientific exchanges resulting from EU projects allow scientific interaction of chemists, physicists or biologists experimenter or theorist contributors to obtain new results in the field of physics to nano-technology advances in research fields such as information storage, optical control of bio-activities or energy conversion at the nanoscale. The interaction between applied and basic research groups, physicists and chemists, experimenters and theorists, biologists, the possibility of accessing different characterization techniques also will contribute to new and innovative designs of molecules or molecular systems photo-chemically activated. There are currently scientific links between contributors for future research projects. For example the LIA CNRS NAPOLI between the team of physicists from the University of Angers and the team of chemists at the Technical University of Wroclaw (Poland) develops nano-objects of engineering for azopolymère photonics and biology applications. The Wroclaw University of Technology and Tampere University of Technology in Finland interact and have joint publications. This is to extend and federate these collaborations between European actors of this research on these molecules on joint research projects and actions of skill networks. The projects covered will lead to the creation of a European COST network (Materials, Physics and Nanosciences (MPNS)), and calls for NMBP projects. For that the ANR support will ensure the synergy of ideas on joint research projects for the intermediate and final writings of the calls. The developed projects will establish widespread international relations by promoting a multidisciplinary collaborative research. The purpose of the network is to bring the European research community with knowledge in the field of molecular systems photoswitching to application areas for the development of current science challenges. There is no example to our knowledge of a European network COST around these molecules and European networks working on this molecular function are being completed or are not concerned by the interaction between different disciplinary fields of research. Moreover on this research field, Europe has a real leadership compare to the rest of the world and must continue to keep this position ahead of Japanese and Chinese teams.

The monitoring of contaminants in the marine environment still presents a number of challenges to overcome, e.g. large dilutions of pollutants which appear at very low, but biologically significant concentrations. The use of miniaturized biosensors can offer several advantages, such as high sensitivity, specificity, and ability to work on site and in a wide range of matrices. The outcome of the FLAshMoB project will be the development of small, portable, easy to use, and robust biosensing platforms to monitor marine contaminants. Different biosensors will be developed, based on chimera proteins endowed with both the adhesive properties of a self-assembling amyloid moiety and the recognition ability of specific proteins, suitable for monitoring contaminants relevant for the marine environment. Indeed amyloid fibrils can efficiently play the role of connecting bridge between organic and inorganic surfaces. By genetic fusion to these self-assembling proteins, the sensing proteins can be stably anchored onto a surface with a precise orientation. Biosensors based on amyloid-proteins show an enhancement of sensitivity with respect to other reported systems. Specific proteins will be genetically fused to a fungal amyloid protein: (i) laccase, an oxidative enzyme useful for sensing aromatic pollutants -Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals; (ii) arsenate reductase, an extremophilic enzyme to be used for specific arsenic detection; (iii) antibodies against marine toxins from algae, such as saxitoxin and domoic acid; (iv) Glutathione S-transferase (GST), a multifunctional protein useful for the detection of the total heavy metals content. Other strengths of the proposed project are the exploitation of nanomaterials to improve the efficiency of the systems and the development of both Lab-On-a-Chip and portable devices.

Attentional and spatial deficits are common after brain damage (vascular, neurodegenerative or traumatic), and have dramatic consequences on patients’ everyday life and functional prognosis. Neurocognitive assessment and training is crucial for diagnosis, rehabilitation and prevention of these disorders. Data collection and processing in different countries, by different experts in hospitals and research centres are severely limited by the use of traditional paper-and-pencil tests. Despite their large diffusion, these tests lead to results difficult to evaluate and compare in populations of patients. A huge amount of potentially crucial information is thus lost. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the field of clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation is now changing the landscape. In recent years, novel techniques of technology-enhanced assessment entered the clinical practice. Their use has particularly benefitted the diagnosis and follow-up of visuo-spatial cognitive deficits, because these deficits typically manifest themselves during physical object manipulation or navigation. These techniques have the potential to collect a great amount of data, which however are not currently exploited in the best possible ways. Data from many patients with similar neurological conditions across several European countries could feed a public, anonymized database, open to researchers and clinicians. Such very large database would allow researchers to perform analyses with an unprecedented level of statistical power, depth and completeness. This approach needs diverse competences, in clinical and experimental neuropsychology, computer science, big data management and artificial intelligence. The objectives of the NeuroDataShare project are: 1. Develop an European Shared Database, using big data paradigms, openly sharing the data collected from neurocognitive assessment and trainings with a twofold scheme: (1) providing researchers with the opportunity to extract and apply data by using pattern recognition and Artificial Intelligence models; (2) providing clinicians with automatic algorithms for a rapid and easy data extraction from different patients. Design and apply the highest level of security for the data, including all the relevant features of security and anonymity, according to the most strict European laws. Create a common methodology in order to bridge the tools and procedures of the assessment and training of visuo-spatial and attentional abilities, allowing a quick digitalization of the previous and future data, feeding the database with data from neurocognitive assessment and training designing user-friendly platforms and applying co-design criteria involving clinicians, physicians, and practitioners. 2. Benefit from the potential of the data aggregation of the shared database to answer neuroscientific and clinical questions, by identifying neural and behavioural predictors of patients’ recovery and response to treatments. 3. Promote and include new methods for the tracking of the assessment and training sessions, using the new technologies, in particular applying tangible interfaces, augmented reality and gamification paradigms. 4. Apply Artificial Intelligence and machine learning methods to transfer, share and store collected data for researchers and professionals, to allow a common ground, and creating algorithms for automated interpretation of the clinical tests. 5. Increase the awareness on this theme in the scientific community, disseminating the results of the project and measuring the numerical impact of this process; 6. Create a multidisciplinary community of practices composed by neuroscientists, computer scientists, engineers, psychologists, physicians and practitioners, organizing an international conference about the digitalization of the data in the neurocognitive assessment and training; 7. Define plans to apply the set of methods developed within NeuroDataShare to other clinical fields.