The workshop, held at FAPESP headquarters on November 29 and 30, 2023, aimed to raise awareness of collaboration possibilities between Research Centers supported by both agencies and to examine means of increasing joint actions, in preparation for collaborative calls and other actions to be launched in 2024.
Among other activities, the workshop included the institutional presentation of each center, matchmaking opportunities, and brainstorming sessions bringing together centers funded by both agencies, seeking to identify new collaboration and funding opportunities.
Check-out the SMARTNESS poster presented at the workshop.
In particular, SMARTNESS representatives identified elements of synergy with other centers, pinpointing potential research collaborations.
According to Professor Christian Rothenberg, director of SMARTNESS, “The face-to-face meeting at FAPESP was a great experience. It was motivating and enlightening to see how other ERCs are achieving their objectives. It was rewarding to learn how our ongoing plans around research, technology transfer and education have noteworthy similarities in terms of specific actions (e.g. workforce development) despite different application domains. In scope of networking and cloud technologies, we are excited about a few specific collaboration opportunities we look forward to bootstrap in 2024.”
As for Dr. Maria Valéria Marquezini, vice-director of SMARTNESS, “I see an enormous potential for cooperation with some ERCs both in the USA, partially financed by the NSF, and in Brazil, partially financed by FAPESP. Many such centers are dealing with potential 6G use cases, in different verticals such as smart cities, smart manufacturing, precision agriculture, and health, which may require innovative smart networking and edge computing solutions. The ERCs are in different levels of maturity, being a rich environment for cooperation. We can learn from the experience of the more mature ones and share the challenges with the new ones”.
Read more about the workshop from the following FAPESP article on the NSF-FAPESP ERC workshop held in Nov, 2023.
