ARETE Kick Off Meeting
ARETE is a €3.9 million research and innovation project funded by European Union’s H2020 programme. The project is led by Assoc. Professor Eleni Mangina from the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. The aim of ARETE is to support pan-European interactive technologies effort from both industry and academia, through multi-user interactions within AR technologies evaluated in education in both professional and private contexts.
Pictured below are the ARETE consortium partners with ARETE External Advisory Board members and Industry Capacity Board members.
The consortium consists of 10 partners from 7 European countries (Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and UK) comprising of seven academic partners (University College Dublin, Stichting VU, University of Leicester, Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Julius-Maximilians-Universitat Wurzburg, Fundacion Centro de Tecnologias de Interaccion visual Y Comunicaciones Vicomtech, Oxford Brookes University), two industry partners (CleverBooks Limited and Wordsworth Learning Limited) and one non-profit organization (EUN Partnership AISBL). The academic and private partnerships within ARETE will reinforce European leadership in AR-based teaching and learning technologies by addressing the technological challenge of modernizing and improving education with AR interactive technologies within the pilot studies.
University College Dublin is one of Europe's leading research-intensive universities, where a comprehensive suite of strong disciplines forms the foundation of high-quality interdisciplinary research, scholarship and innovation. UCD is ranked within the top 1% of higher education institutions worldwide. UCD Computer Science School is committed to excellence research and teaching to provide the skills and innovations to support the demands for ICT skills. In 2018-2019, the UCD School of Computer Science secured over €34 million in research grants in ICT.
Project Coordinator Assoc. Professor Mangina’s research focus is on software analysis, design and development of multi agent systems, which utilize different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Her lab operates at the intersection between applied Artificial Intelligence (VR/AR; Data Analytics; UAVs, Information Systems) and a portfolio development within interdisciplinary applications (i.e. Engineering [Energy Sector] and Educational System with XR). She is coordinating three EU projects and furthermore is involved in two projects funded by EU and three projects funded by Science Foundation Ireland. ARETE builds on an EU funded pilot project, AHA: Technologies and Tools for Children and Young People with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which was coordinated by Assoc. Professor Mangina between 2017 and 2019.
On the 28th and 29th of November 2019, UCD was delighted to host the ARETE kick of meeting. Day one of the meeting began with the coordinator welcoming all partners, followed by introductions of the External Advisory Board members and Industry Capacity Board members. The remaining programme featured a series of presentations from the coordinator who reviewed key points of the Grant Agreement, introduced the project’s management, communications and data management plan and a brief introduction of each work package by the work packages leaders. Day 1 concluded with an Impact Assessment and Sustainability Plan Exercise.
Day two began with the presentations from National Standards Authority of Ireland director Paul Killeen on Standardization and a presentation by Fernando Utrilla Ortega from the Spanish Association for Standardisation-UNE on ARETE’s CEN CWA Deliverable and Workshop Plan. Following this, the Deliverables D1.1 and D1.2 were lively discussed. Day 2 ended by a presentation from the project manager Na Li on the financial management. The next ARETE consortium meeting will be hosted by the project partner Vicomtech in August 2020 in Spain.
