On March 3rd, the 10 projects which were awarded funding from the GÉANT Innovation Programme last year gathered online for a virtual showcase. The webinar saw an attendance of over 100 participants from all around the world. The winning projects alone are from six countries and eight different organisations.
What were the projects awarded?
In February 2021, we launched the first edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme as part of the GÉANT Community Programme (GCP). The GÉANT Association reserved EUR300k to support specific research projects to be carried out by the GÉANT Community.
Each project funding was of EUR30k for a max duration of 9 months.
Which projects were selected?
The funding was awarded to ten winning projects in Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and United Kingdom in the areas of multimedia, networks, trust&identity, education, clouds, security, and privacy.
These projects have proven to be unique and innovative ideas with a significant scientific or societal and economic impact for the community.
The awarded projects are the following:
- The Dutch NREN, SURF, explored the role of NRENs as EU Digital Identity Wallets Proxies.
- The University of Sussex developed and evaluated next-generation data transport protocols for low earth orbit satellite networks.
- The Polish NREN, PSNC, extended some functionalities of eduMEET:
- created a user-friendly mingling space for group building and interaction;
- enabled the synchronous playout of high-quality videos and the upload of videos on demand.
- Tel Aviv University worked on improving the robustness and attack resiliency of the Domain Name System.
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics studied educational claims and recommendation letter service with eduGAIN identifiers.
- The Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni was awarded two proposals:
- To extend GÉANT Cloud Flow’s services with open-source software
- And to deploy a service for creating overlay VPNs for end users based on SRv6 with an integrated Performance Monitoring framework.
- The Electronic Engineering Department of Tor Vergata University in Rome built a privacy preserving file sharing service called ABEBox.
- And last but not least, the University of Brescia in Italy worked on protecting peoples’ privacy preventing un-authorised surveillance via designing and implementing an 802.11 Privacy Preserving Sub-Layer.
During the virtual showcase, the 10 projects had the opportunity to showcase the results of their activities by first briefly presenting their idea during lightning talks and then diving deep into the technicalities, achievements, and future plans in the breakout rooms.
The final Q&A and discussion was very fruitful and the participants even brought new ideas to the table so that the Community can continue to improve and upgrade their services and tools.
You can all find the recordings and slides uploaded on to the wiki. More information about the awarded projects can be found on the Community Programme website.
Can I still apply in 2022?
Unfortunately, the deadline to submit proposals for the 2022 edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme has expired. Depending on the outcome of this first round, and if some of the funds are still available, the Committee might decide to launch a second call.
More information on the Innovation Programme webpage.
