Category: News

The “Linked Data and Analytics for SMEs” Workshop & Hackathon 2015 is organised in the context of LinDA (http://www.linda-project.eu) FP7 research project by UBITECH in collaboration with the project partners NTUA and CP. The Workshop & Hackathon are going to take place at Innovathens at 20/11/2015.

The purpose of the Workshop & Hackathon is to explore and showcase the added value of Open and Linked Data for the business sector, in terms of effort and cost reductions, new business values introduction and increase in efficiency and flexibility of data-driven SMEs. In the workshop, the project results are going to be demonstrated, focusing at the LinDA workbench that has been developed as a complete toolsuite for SMEs to manipulate linked data simply, while boosting the data management to higher levels of competitiveness, through advanced analytics and visualizations. The presentation of the project’s results, in issues pertaining to healthcare, energy and media industries, will lay the foundations for deliberation among representatives of SMEs, entrepreneurial groups, public entities, NGO members, data analysts and researchers.

As already mentioned, the event is comprised of two sections; the Workshop (10:00 – 14:30), where business representatives will have the chance to discuss, over real-life scenarios, the opportunities and challenges of the exploitation of linked data tools and their impact on business operations, and the Hackathon (10:00 – 17:00), where developers will work together towards utilizing the LinDA workbench to develop proof-of-concept applications.

You can find the agenda of the event here. To participate to the Workshop event please register here.

The vision of the MARK1 project is to address the need for early and accurate detection of malignant melanoma, through the intelligent and automatic scanning of the entire human body, facilitating the automatic focus on areas suspicious for skin cancer, while coupling the automation process with human experts supervision and guidance, as well as to enable the follow up and monitoring for further analysis or treatment whenever and wherever necessary, through a screening solution that will be easily accessible to the general public and location-independent. In the context of the project, the consortium partners led by MEDISP organized a scientific workshop. The goals of the MARK1 workshop were to increase the level of public awareness regarding melanoma early detection, increase the overall visibility of the MARK1 project to the scientific community and present the scientific results following the application of MARK1 to real world data. Two radio interviews were performed during the day of the event. The first interview was given at radio station PROTO PROGRAMMA (http://www.ert.gr/proto), whereas the second at radio station ATHINA 984 (http://www.athina984.gr). In addition to the radio interviews, the organisation of the workshop kickstarted a series of publications of the project scope and results in several web media, the complete list of which (in Greek) can be found here.

The vision of the MARK1 project is to address the need for early and accurate detection of malignant melanoma, through the intelligent and automatic scanning of the entire human body, facilitating the automatic focus on areas suspicious for skin cancer, while coupling the automation process with human experts supervision and guidance, as well as to enable the follow up and monitoring for further analysis or treatment whenever and wherever necessary, through a screening solution that will be easily accessible to the general public and location-independent. The proposed solution shall provide painless, effortless and efficient self-screening of skin lesions, for early, accurate detection of melanoma, independent of the patient’s location, safeguard sensitive patient data and maintain patient-doctor confidentiality, as well as ensure accurate diagnosis delivered by the specialist (physician), independent of the physician’s and patient’s physical locations.

In the context of the project, the consortium partners led by MEDISP organized a scientific workshop on Wednesday, 11 November 2015. The goals of the MARK1 workshop were to increase the level of public awareness regarding melanoma early detection, increase the overall visibility of the MARK1 project to the scientific community and present the scientific results following the application of MARK1 to real world data. The workshop was held at the premises of the Biomedical Engineering Department of TEI of Athens. The target audience of the workshop comprised of individual scientists and researchers, research organizations & research groups, higher education institutes, health care centers and organizations, experts & professionals and general public. About 100 people participated at the workshop, including students, academics, researchers, physicians and representatives from private sector companies. The workshop main website can be found here. The program included three keynote speeches, a round table discussion and a demonstrator stand. A program brochure was composed and distributed digitally and as a hard copy to target audience and can be found here.

The LinkedDesign FP7 project completed successfully in August 2015, and achieved a positive final review that took place in Brussels in October 30, 2015. The LinkedDesign LEAP platform, implemented within the project lifetime, enables user-centric lifecycle information management and provides context-driven access to federated information and knowledge, such that each user is equipped with all information required for his/her specific role and engineering task – preventing from information overload leading to long search times. Furthermore, the LEAP platform fosters cross-discipline collaborations between users by novel approaches for collaborative engineering. The LEAP front-end has been developed as a Virtual Obeya, constituting a virtual control center where all information confluence and are shared at desks for each involved participant, independent of location and context.

Within the context of the project, UBITECH has heavily contributed to the technical design and implementation of the LinkedDesign Conceptual Model (LD Ontology). Additionally, UBITECH has led the implementation of the LinkedDesign Instance Importer that offers a set of reasoning services over HTTP protocol, thus it provides a simpler and easier integration approach to start facilitating the utilization of highly complex functionalities similar to the ones offered by a reasoner. The specific component exposes reasoning services over a HTTP API, which can be easily deployed and configured on a Cloud environment. It may also support arbitrary ontologies and rules expressed in SWRL. Based on the fashion by which it was implemented, the LinkedDesign Instance Importer may easily achieve high availability and scalability.

For more information, please visit the project’s website or contact us.

A scientific paper entitled “Propelling SMEs Business Intelligence through Linked Data Production and Consumption” has been presented by UBITECH at the 10th OTM/IFAC International Workshop on Enterprise Integration, Interoperability and Networking (EI2N’2015) that is part of the OnTheMove Federated Conferences & Workshops 2015 (OTM 2015). OTM 2015 is being held in Rhodes, Greece at October 26-29, 2015. At this paper, Eleni Fotopoulou and Anastasios Zafeiropoulos – along with other co-authors – propose an approach for the production of added-value business analytics through the consumption of interlinked versions of data and the exploitation of linked data principles. Furthermore, the paper includes the findings that were realised through the execution of the Business Intelligence Analytics pilot operation of the LinDA project, which concerns the examination of the effects of Over-The-Counter (OTC) medicines liberalisation in the OTC market pool and business opportunities in Europe. The analysis aims at identifying correlations between pharmaceutical, healthcare, socio-economic and political parameters and tackles several research questions that were identified at the initial steps of the analysis.

Source: http://onthemove-conferences.org/index.php/otm-program-2015/program-ei2n-2015

UBITECH attends the “ICT 2015 – Innovate, Connect, Transform”, in Lisbon, Portugal on 20-22 October 2015, organised by the European Commission, together with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. The event, which focuses on Horizon 2020 – the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation for 2014-2020 and gathers more than 5,000 registered participants and delegates from the academia, the research community and the industry, comprises a conference presenting the new European Commission’s initiatives on Research & Innovation in ICT for 2016-2017; an interactive exhibition showcasing over 100 best results and impact of most recent European ICT Research Projects; and many networking opportunities to enhance quality partnerships, help participants find partners, connect Research and Innovation and trigger collaboration.

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/ict2015-innovate-connect-transform-lisbon-20-22-october-2015

UBITECH is happy to invite you to network and connect with us at the ICT 2015 conference in Lisbon, Portugal at the networking session “No More Dark Clouds: A Privacy Preserving Framework for the Cloud” that we are co-organizing with CAS, ICCS and SICS. This networking session introduces a forward-looking design for secure cryptographic cloud storage (co-funded by the European Commission in the context of the PaaSword H2020 project). The focal points of the proposed design are Searchable Encryption and Context-aware Access Control Mechanisms. Together, they enable secure and privacy preserving cloud services that will protect users’ data and, in consequence, will help to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/events/cf/ict2015/item-display.cfm?id=15492

UBITECH has actively participated in the kick-off meeting, in Nieuwegein, Netherlands (October 8-9, 2015) of the SUBSOL research project, officially started on September 1st, 2015. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 642228) and spans on the period September 2015 – August 2018. SUBSOL targets at introducing a new way of thinking in terms of water resources management, promoting the sustainable development of coastal areas worldwide.

Coastal areas are the most productive and economically dominant regions of the world. The high water demand in these regions, however, puts tremendous pressure on their freshwater resources and ecosystems. This leads to problems like seasonal water shortage, saltwater intrusion, and disappearance of wetlands. Building on national, regional and European research and innovation programs, in the past five years, a set of innovative, practical concepts have been developed for protection, enlargement and utilization of freshwater resources in coastal areas. These subsurface water solutions (SWS) combine innovations in water well design and configuration, allowing for advanced groundwater management, and maximum control over freshwater resources. SWS have been successfully piloted by public-private partnerships. These full-scale pilots have demonstrated SWS capacity to support sustainable freshwater supply in coastal areas, energy reduction, food production, and financial savings.

In SUBSOL, UBITECH is responsible for designing and deploying the IT infrastructure in the Greek Pilot at the coastal site of the Schinias Natural Park as well as contributing in the development of the SUBSOL online platform targeted for sharing experiences and outcomes with stakeholder groups, that will be linked to existing networks, including EIP on Water.

Source: http://www.kwrwater.nl/page.aspx?id=11473

UBITECH participated at the Cloud Forward 2015 Conference that took place in Pisa, Italy at 6-8 of October 2015. The Cloud Forward 2015 Conference brought together experts from industry and academia to consider the future of and beyond Cloud Computing. The conference reviewed experiences and discussed future directions to overcome problems and provide new opportunities for the utilisation of leading edge Cloud Computing by industry and academia and for ICT developers providing innovative solutions. Dr. Constantinos Vassilakis participated on behalf of the ARCADIA and INPUT Horizon 2020 projects on the clustering activities organized within the conference and mainly the “Software Engineering for Services and Applications” cluster and the “New Approaches for Infrastructure Services” cluster. A set of presentations were provided concerning the overall objectives and approach followed in the ARCADIA project, as well as the current status of the white paper that is under preparation within the “Software Engineering for Services and Applications” cluster for describing current challenges and trends in the software engineering world.

Source: http://cf2015.holacloud.eu/programme

UBITECH participated at the Critical Infrastructure Protection workshop at PCI 2015 that took place in Athens, Greece at 2nd of October 2015. In the workshop, several research initiatives were presented with regards to risk mitigation for Critical Infrastructure protection, Critical Infrastructure security and resilience, software defined security mechanisms along with applied tools for supporting ports security and assessing the risks for ports’ supply chain services. On behalf of UBITECH, Dr. Anastasios Zafeiropoulos presented a novel approach for designing and implementing software defined security mechanisms taking into account the opportunities that exist based on the evolvement of novel technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies. Main security threats, challenges and opportunities for the design of advanced security solutions were presented taking into account different NFV deployment models. For more information, please contact us or find the presentation here.