GIOTTO is a EU-funded research and innovation project aimed to develop new medical devices to treat bone fractures, applying the most updated advances of “key enabling technologies”. The final aim is to offer specific solutions for the different types of osteoporotic fractures, stimulating bone regeneration while reducing bone loss.

Medical doctors, scientists and medical device producers from 14 organizations in 9 Countries around Europe work together to provide better treatment solutions with lower side effects to the increasing number of people suffering from painful and debilitating osteoporotic fractures. The new devices developments are based on cutting edge technologies in the fields of advanced manufacturing, nanotechnology, biotechnology and Internet of Things (IoT).

ELITE-S is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Action for new intersectoral training, career development and mobility fellowship programme based at the ADAPT Centre in DCU and its academic partners:

• DCU - Dublin City University
• DIT - Dublin Institute of Technology
• UCD - University College Dublin
• TCD - Trinity College Dublin

The programme will train the next generation of leaders in ICT Standards by offering 16 prestigious two-year fellowships to experienced researchers (ER) for incoming mobility across two calls over the 60 months duration of the programme. Fellowships will be offered in the four core research areas:

• Regulations and Compliance
• Content Analytics and Content Preservation
• Data and Process Management
• Interoperability

And applicants will have the freedom to choose among these research topics where they’ll develop ground-breaking research to become research leaders of the future. Fellows will conduct their research in one of the academic partners and also take part in a secondment period in the industry, maximizing their benefit from the academy expertise, industry collaboration opportunities and representation opportunities at Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs).

To find out more about ELITE-S, please go to their website.

In contemporary engineering education worldwide, there is a conflict between the need for technical knowledge and a growing recognition that young engineers must possess a wider array of cross-disciplinary skills that will allow them to function in real engineering teams.

Although much of engineering is inherently creative and innovative, teaching and education often focus on narrow and deep technical specifications, with little room in the curriculum for developing the ability to think and act creatively and innovatively. Whilst engineering is a highly disciplined subject, the elements of Creativity and Innovation are often not recognised and further developed in engineers.

Given this context, there is a need to develop new pedagogical and teacher training material focused on the integration of these vital skills into engineering education. Therefore, this Erasmus+ supported project - Creative Engine – aims to develop an openly accessible modular training course focused on the subject of Creativity and Innovation that will encourage future engineers to understand the value and relevance of these competencies within their studies and careers.

The project has five key outcomes including:

1. The development of 6 new training modules on Creativity and Innovation in Engineering;
2. A Report on the Innovation Skills needs of Engineering Industries across Europe;
3. The production of Infographic report on Creativity and Innovation Needs;
4. The Provision of Supplementary Resources Package on Creativity and Innovation;
5. An Online Toolkit that companies can use to build awareness and understanding of creativity and innovation skills.

Several European partners have joined together in the Creative Engine project, including DCU in Ireland. Together, we aim to ensure that engineering learners are equipped with the necessary knowledge required to boost their employability opportunities, entrepreneurial capability and ability to become leading engineers.

For more information contact:

Dr James Carton [james.carton@dcu.ie]

Dr Anne Morrissey [anne.morrissey@dcu.ie]

Mr Kelvin Martins [kelvin.cardozomartins@dcu.ie]        

NEWTON  will develop, integrate and disseminate innovative technology enhanced learning (TEL) methods and tools, to create or inter-connect existing state-of the art teaching labs and to build a pan-European learning network platform that supports fast dissemination of learning content to a wide audience in a ubiquitous manner. NEWTON focuses on employing novel technologies in order to increase learner quality of experience, improve learning process and increase learning outcome.

The NEWTON project goals are to:

• Develop and deploy a set of new TEL mechanisms involving multi-modal and multisensorial media distribution
• Develop, integrate, deploy and disseminate state of the art technology-enhanced teaching methodologies including augmented reality, gamification and self-directed learning addressed to users from secondary and vocational schools, third level and further education, including students with physical disabilities
• Build a large platform that links all stakeholders in education, enables content reuse, supports generation of new content, increases content exchange in diverse forms, develops and disseminates new teaching scenarios, and encourages new innovative businesses
• Perform personalisation and adaptation for content, delivery and presentation in order to increase learner quality of experience and to improve learning process
• Validate the platform impact and the effectiveness of the teaching scenarios in terms of user satisfaction, improvement of the learning and teaching experience etc. and the underlying technology through an European-wide real-life pilot.