Consortium
Established in 1962, the University of Trento is nowadays recognized as a leading academic institution in Italy and Europe for its quality of research and international outreach, particularly in ICT, economics and sociology. The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) was established in January 2002. Since then, it has grown to more than 50 faculty members and has hosted 200 full-time PhD students and 100 research staff, soon becoming recognized as the top computer science department in Italy. The DISI has an outstanding scientific ability to attract R&D funding (22 EC projects in FP6, 22 in FP7) as well as considerable experience of EC project coordination, such as: Living Knowledge (FP7 FET IP, coordinator) LiquidPub (FP7 FET-OPEN STREP, coordinator), Glocal (FP7 IP, coordinator); and EternalS (FP7 FET CSA, coordinator). The University of Trento is part of Trento-RISE (T-RISE), that is the collective Trentino Research, Innovation and Education System, and an associated partner of the EIT-ICTLabs KIC. Its members, in addition to the University of Trento, include among the others CREATE-NET and the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK). Over time, the DISI has also consolidated as an international and multi-cultural working environment, hosting an EU Marie Curie Chair in Networking and Security, an EU Erasmus Mundus Masters in Informatics (jointly with the Universities of RWTH Aachen and Edinburgh) and holding a formalized long-term collaboration with Indian Universities and Research Centres.
The University of Trento will be the Coordinator of the SmartSociety Project. It will also take a leadership role in Work Packages WP11 and WP4, and will contribute to other WPs. Its long-term experience in coordinating and managing EC projects as well as its international reach will enable the DISI to efficiently cover the overall coordinating role for the SmartSociety Project (WP11). Also, building on the consolidated experience of its researchers, DISI will contribute substantially to shaping the vision and mission of SmartSociety across Europe through the engagement of appropriate scientific, industrial and social stakeholders. Moreover, DISI will contribute to outreach activities to key stakeholders (both from academia and industry).
The University of Edinburgh brings the world leading strength of the School of Informatics. This expertise is reinforced through the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SISCA) a collaboration of leading Scottish universities in computer science. Within the UK, SISCA members hold 20% of UK national ICS research funds against a population of 9% of the UK total. Over half of the Scottish total is held by Informatics at Edinburgh (representing approximately 10% of the UK total). In the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008 we returned over one hundred researchers in Computer Science and Informatics. Our submission contained more “world leading” and more “internationally excellent” research than any other submission in this unit of assessment. Around this core of research leaders is a research concentration of approximately 400 research staff and PhD students. We also support one of the UK’s most thriving informatics technology transfer organisations which provides dedicated support for commercialisation, entrepeneurialism and technology transfer, in which Edinburgh leads the UK in terms of number of spinout companies in the past decade (according to http://www.spinoutsuk.co.uk/).
The University of Edinburgh will be a significant participant in the project, involving multiple PIs and researchers. UEDIN will take a leading role in WP6 and WP10, and will contribute to the other work packages bringing in diverse expertise in areas including socio-technical systems, models of social computation, multi-agent reasoning and machine learning. Building on this expertise, UEDIN will contribute substantially to shaping the SmartSociety’s vision and mission across Europe through the engagement of appropriate scientific, industrial and social stakeholders; as well as contributing to outreach activities to key stakeholders.
U-Hopper is a high-tech SME, headquartered in the Trentino area, Italy, providing solutions and technologies for the emerging fields of mobile crowdsensing, mobile data intelligence, and personalized context-aware services. U-Hopper builds its solutions on the concept of fully exploiting the information and knowledge hidden in the enormous amount of data that can be collected using mobile phones, in terms of both usage patterns by subscribers as well as through sensors customarily found in current smartphones). Using cutting-edge data mining techniques and data analytics tools, U-Hopper solutions enable customers to identify and extract relevant patterns, with applications to a variety of domains, including mobile advertising, environmental monitoring in the form of personalized well-being, and urban mobility services that include mine location traces for personalized mobility services. U-Hopper is a spin-off of the international research centre CREATE-NET (http://www.create-net.org). U- Hopper focuses on the design, prototyping, and evaluation of innovative distributed and mobile sensing solutions. U-Hopper solutions target both public bodies (including municipalities and public authorities) as well as organizations in the private sector.
U-Hopper will be leading WP8, where it will be in charge of developing the SmartSociety platform and to integrate the components designed and prototyped within WP3-WP6. It will further work on the proof-of-concept demonstrators (WP9), in the development of advanced high-impact scenarios for HDA-CASSs (WP1) and will be coordinating the exploitation activities (WP10).
The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), with facilities in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Bremen, and a project office in Berlin, is the country's leading research center in the area of innovative software technology for commercial application. DFKI was founded in 1988 as a non-profit organization by several renowned German IT companies and two research facilities. DFKI projects typically include the entire spectrum from basic research to market- and customer-oriented development of product functions. Currently, DFKI has about 760 employees (among them 325 as a side job). The circle of DFKI industrial partners comprises among others Daimler AG, Deutsche Telekom AG, SAP AG, Software AG, Attensity Europe GmbH, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH, Deutsche Post AG, BMW AG Deutsche Messe AG, EADS Astrium GmbH, Intel Corporation and Ricoh Ltd. (some of them via associated companies). The specific research unit involved: “Embedded Intelligence” has been founded in 2011 by Prof Paul Lukowicz. It emerged from his group previously at the University of Passau which was an international leader in ubiquitous and wearable sensing, activity recognition and related applications. It has three focus areas: general Pervasive Computing, Collaborative Cyber Physical Systems, and Socially Interactive Computing. Within Pervasive Computing the focus is on context awareness and its applications. Socially Interactive Computing is driven by vision of extending the notion of context awareness from a “single user single system” to systems that interact with humans at community level, effectively combining aspects of pervasive computing and social networking. The groups expertise builds on current and present participation in related European projects such as FuturICT, SOCIONICAL, ALLOW, OPPORTUNITY, and REALTE (all FET) and MONARCA, INTERSTRESS, MonAmi, WearIt@Work (applications oriented) and other.
DFKI will be leading WP3, where it will leverage on his expertise in pervasive computing and socially interactive computing to devise new forms of interactions for the SmartSociety project. It will further be active in other WPs.
The University of Oxford employs over 7,100 academic, research and support staff across a wide range of academic disciplines. Its mission is to achieve and sustain excellence in every area of its teaching and research, maintaining and developing its historical position as a world-class university, and enriching the international, national, and regional communities through the fruits of its research and the skills of its graduates. In support of this aim, the University provides the facilities and support for its staff to pursue innovative research, building upon Oxford's outstanding research record, by responding to developments in the intellectual environment and society at large, and by forging close links with the wider academic world, the professions, industry, and commerce. The University has four academic divisions (Humanities; Social Sciences; Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences; and Medical Sciences) through which its academic administration is conducted. Each division is led by a full time Head of Division who chairs the Divisional Board and major committees. The Oxford e-Research Centre is a unique centre of excellence at the University of Oxford which works across all fields and disciplines to enable the use and development of innovative computational and information technology. Since its foundation in 2006, the Oxford e-Research Centre has attracted an internationally prestigious team of 50 multidisciplinary researchers committed to accelerating research through innovative technology in fields as diverse as Chemistry and the Humanities, HPC and the Social Sciences - as well as leading work on the ethics of e-Research. The Centre now collaborates with over 20 research units across the University, leading a consortium of six University groups through e-Research South and has strategic research collaborations in the US, Australasia and Europe.
The University of Oxford will be leader of WP1, where in particular it will focus on Ethical Governance and Value Sensitive Design for SmartSociety. The University of Oxford will also contribute to other WPs.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev was established in 1969 with the aim to bring development to the Negev, a desert area comprising more than 60% of the country. Today, Ben-Gurion University is a major center for teaching and research, with campuses in Beer-Sheva, including the Marcus Family Campus, as well as in Eilat and Sede Boqer. More than 19,000 students are enrolled in the Faculties of Engineering Sciences, Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management and the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies. In keeping with its mandate, Ben-Gurion University plays a key role in promoting industry and education in the Negev. BGU is part of the global community, with researchers sharing internationally their expertise in such fields as hi-tech, bio-tech, medicine, arid zone agriculture, solar energy, water resource management, nanotechnology and more. The University anticipates exciting challenges in innovative fields of research and hopes to bring new opportunities to Beer- Sheva and the Negev while continuing its pursuit of academic excellence and expanding its contribution to the community. The Department of Information Systems Engineering at BGU is the largest information systems school in Israel. It includes research groups of recognized excellence at the international level. BGU will participate in the SmartSociety project through the Artificial Intelligence Research Group at Ben-Gurion University (AIRG@BGU), which serves as the center of AI-related research occurring at BGU.
BGU will lead WP5, and will contribute to WP2, WP6 and WP10. BGU will coordinate project activities on the design of incentive schemes for HDA-CASs. It will also contribute to the development of computational models for SmartSociety, and to the design of effective coordination mechanism at the social level.
Founded in February 2004, Imaginary is a private company within the Innovation Network of the University Politecnico di Milano, with more than 25 staff members and active on European scale. The main area of activity is the design and development of technology-enhanced learning solutions in knowledge intensive organizations, including the design and development of simulation systems, Serious Games and Virtual Worlds. Imaginary’s team comprises diverse competences, with a strong focus on technology (in particular on open source approaches, web and mobile applications development and user requirement analysis), but also with competences on learning methodology and pedagogy. Imaginary has experience in EU-scale projects, having been involved in several EU-funded projects (e.g. iSPECTRUM, ImREAL, MIRROR, MODES, VOICES, E-VITA, eLSe Academy, PROLIX, PROLEARN, SUPERHUB). Within such initiatives imaginary’s role has typically been in the design and development of complex service-oriented architectures, focusing on serious-games based solutions, for different target groups and on different devices, with different learning objectives ranging from the cultural to the medical and social sectors.
Imaginary will be leading WP9, where proof-of-concepts of the SmartSociety principles and technologies will be developed and validated with real users. As partner in the project consortium imaginary will have a strong role in the specification, design and integration of the proposed solution architecture and technological infrastructure by also contributing to the definition of user-centred scenarios, the elicitation of user and technical requirement as well as to the research concerning innovative serious games-based learning/training methodologies to be applied by the project. Imaginary will also participate to the dissemination activities and, as an industrial (SME) partner will contribute to business modelling and exploitation planning activities.
Karlstad University is located in Värmland, Sweden and has around 12.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and just over 1100 staff. It offers 50 programs and 750 courses in the fields of humanities, health sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, education and technology. KAU specialises also on interdisciplinary research projects conducted by its research centre HumanIT (Human value of IT). HumanIT elaborates both human and technical aspects of IT in close cooperation with industry. The PriSec (Privacy and Security) research group at the Computer Science Department is specialised on research in IT security and privacy-enhancing technologies as well as usable privacy in cooperation with the centre HumanIT. PriSec has contributed as a partner to the R&D work of several privacy and security-related projects, including the EU FP7 IP PrimeLife, FP7 NoE Newcom++, EU Safer Internet Plus project FIVES, the EU FP6 IP PRIME (which received the HP-IAPP Privacy Innovation Technology Award in 2008), the FP6 NoE FIDIS and the EU Celtic project BUGYO (which received the Celtic Excellence Award in 2008). Currently KAU is coordinating the U-PrIM project (Usable Privacy and Identity Management for Smart Applications) funded by the Swedish KK-Foundation, a Google Research Award Project on “Usable Privacy and Transparency”.
KAU will contribute with conducting a privacy impact assessment and deriving Privacy by Design Guidelines for the SmartSociety by mapping ethical and legal privacy requirements into privacy enhancing technology components incorporated into the overall system design.
Vienna University of Technology looks back on a long tradition at the leading edge of scientific research and education: Founded in 1815 as k.k. Polytechnisches Institut (Imperial and Royal Polytechnical Institute), it was divided into 5 faculties in 1865. One year later the first freely elected rector was inaugurated. In 1872 its name changed to Technische Hochschule (College of Technology), and in 1902 the first doctorates were awarded. The institution has borne its current name – Technische Universität Wien (Vienna University of Technology) – since 1975. In 2004 TU Vienna reached full autonomy through the University Act 2002.
The Distributed Systems group (DSG) is a unit of the Institute of Information Systems at the Faculty of Informatics at the Vienna University of Technology. DSG is led by Prof. Schahram Dustdar with around 35 research and support staffs.
TUW will mainly focus on the development of novel programming models and programming frameworks, leading WP7, for the virtualization and composition of machine-based and human- based computing elements in SmartSociety. TUW will work on incentive and rewarding models and composition and how they can be integrated into programming frameworks (WP6).
The University of Southampton is one of the top 15 research universities in the UK. Southampton's record for success in spinning out its research excellence into business ventures has made it one of the leading entrepreneurial universities in the UK. ECS - Electronics and Computer Science received top 5* ratings for research in the last two UK Research Assessment Exercises, in both computer science and electronics. With 140 academics, covering the spectrum of nano-technologies, electronics and electrical engineering, communications and signal processing, electronics and software systems, web and internet science, and agents, interaction and complexity, ECS is one of the largest departments of its kind in the UK and the world.
The Web and Internet Science Group (WAIS) is the largest group (140 staff and students) in ECS. WAIS is a very broad group undertaking multi- and inter- disciplinary research; WAIS initiated the Web Science activity world-wide (Hall, Shadbolt, Berners-Lee), is a pioneer in open linked data (Shadbolt), is at the forefront of Web Standardization (Berners-Lee, Moreau, Gibbins), has brought the issue of provenance to the top of the research agenda (Moreau), has pioneered open access (Harnard), is the creator of the eprints institutional repository (Carr), is the home of a doctoral training center in Web Science (Carr), and is hosting several MSc programmes (Web Science, Web technologies). ECS is also host of a CyberSecurity center (director Sassone).
UoS will lead WP2. University of Southampton will bring to the SmartSociety Consortium its expertise on provenance, trust, and crowd sourcing. Specifically, UoS will be involved in the analysis and design of the infrastructure architecture; the design and implementation of provenance-based reasoning mechanisms related to privacy and trust, helping humans and agents alike make decisions on how to manage interactions in CAS. UoS will contribute to the dissemination activity and take an active role in the standardization, building on their existing track record at the W3C, of which University of Southampton is a member.