As Agents of Innovation we need to do our part in addressing the societal challenges the planet faces and at least try to address some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations in 2015. Our vision is to debate how new technology interceptions can support decent work and economic growth by creating new partnerships to achieve those goals. We choose to address Health, Agri-food, Manufacturing and Sustainable Cities.

The CSS is an event financed by DIATOMIC project – Digital Innovation Hubs boosting European Microelectronics Industry. DIATOMIC aims to establish a sustainable ecosystem to facilitate AME/SSI-based innovation in the Health, Agrifood and Manufacturing sectors, all of which are under-digitized and of prime importance for society and the economy. SMEs and mid-caps from all sectors — the appropriate innovation actors to conceptualise novel digital products, processes and business models — face several challenges. They have limited knowledge of what smart electronics and smart systems can do.

The Cycle will explore growth opportunities at the intersection of four areas of digitalization that are considered fundamental for growth: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity, trying to demonstrate how combining elements of these technologies can tackle the needs of the four application domains.

During the two weeks of the Summit, keynote speakers and pitching sessions participants will address how the sustainable development goals are driving public policy, which are the key challenges in the four application domains and how different funding schemes can support innovation, how the interception of different technological areas are being used to foster growth.

The agenda of the event tries to follow a journey from the strategic view of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the concrete needs that need to be addressed in the first week, how the key enabling technologies chosen can be used to contribute to address the needs and how these developments can be funded in the second week. The goal is to inspire participants in guiding their innovation activities, foster economic growth, while contributing to the satisfaction of the SDGs.

Pre-booked brokerage slots are the common matchmaking opportunities for these types of events. The participants will apply to have a 2 minutes pitch about their company/product/service, what they are looking for and what they can offer, sharing their contacts to all the audience for getting in touch after the end of the session. 

The organization will invite a program committee to ensure overall consistency. Members of this committee will chair the sessions. The format for all sessions will be very interactive between the speaker, moderator and the audience and will be composed by: short presentations that should include interactive tools to allow feedback from the audience and Q&A followed by a round table between speakers. In order to achieve maximum impact, the session chair, the moderator, the speakers will be invited to meet ahead of the event and agree on the narrative to be conveyed. There will be five moderators, one for the plenary sessions, and one for each of the thematic sessions for both weeks. This approach will ensure a logical flow between sessions.

Plenary sessions will focus on cross-cutting issues. P1 will focus on the importance of the UN SDGs, the EU Green Deal, and how both will drive public policy. This plenary aims to bring, from the research side, what are the SDGs which are the focus of the CSS and explain what are the big challenges for the policy and green deal and some examples of the specific technologies will be provided. Furthermore, it will be examined how targeted government policy, including through public-private partnerships, can help build modern communications and Internet infrastructure to facilitate growth, development, and innovation. P2 will try to provide a broader perspective on the SDGs by addressing how partnerships and ethical issues must be considered from inception when trying to define new solutions. P3 will invite speakers from the academy, business, and industry, from different economic sectors, to share their experiences on how organisations are currently: using the 4 KETs (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain and Cybersecurity) to grow their business, addressing the SDGs while developing new technological solutions that create more value to society and making investments that leverage on opportunities related to KETs. In P4 we focus on Public Policies, Funding landscape & Open Call opportunities. This plenary session aims to present the position of public policy in digitilisation and its links to technology, innovation, sustainability and the Green Deal. Speakers include representatives of the European Commission, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Health (TBC). Following the P4 speakers’ presentations a series of funding opportunities of EU funded projects will be presented, providing cascade funding in the four application domains. This includes both currently open calls but also calls that are planned to open until the end of 2020. Funding opportunities that will be presented include calls of the Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) initiative and of a series of projects such as Market4.0, Block.IS, DEMETER and BlockStart to name a few.

• Free registration and opportunity for diverse talks and sessions

• Opportunity to participate in sessions with great speakers about the SDGs and how technology can boost solution

• Find out new funding opportunities

• Meet your peers in matchmaking sessions and make new partnerships

• Unique chance to pitch to investors

See you at the Coimbra Sustainability Summit! Come and prepare your questions – and we will do our best to answer all of them!

Please, register your attendance via: