In co-operation with the EU commision DG Information Society, the third day of SAMT 2006 is dedicated to featuring the launch of the IST 7th Work Program and informative talks from EU Commision representatives. There will be two talks by the Heads of Units D2 and E2, DG INFSO. The talks will be followed by the Projects Special Poster Session. A number of short bilateral sessions is also scheduled, with individuals or small groups interested in discussing potential project ideas in FP7.
Roberto Cencioni
Head of Unit, INFSO.E2, Knowledge & Content Technologies
Directorate General Information Society and Media
The purpose of this session is to present the research lines envisaged within the Intelligent Content objective of the ICT Workprogramme. These themes result from extensive consultations. They build on work performed under FP6 in areas such as cross-media and adaptive content, semantics and knowledge systems, multimedia categorisation and search technologies. Intelligent Content is intended to address and accelerate the convergence of Web, multimedia and knowledge engineering technologies.
While providing an evolutionary path for ongoing efforts, the objective exhibits a number of new features. In particular, it encompasses formal, social and ambient knowledge, thus broadening the document-centric vision that inspired most of FP6 work. Foundational and component technology work will be complemented by systems oriented research primarily geared towards media, enterprise and scientific content and knowledge resources.
The session will provide delegates with a better understanding of both rationale and aims of the objective, thus helping them identify opportunities for ambitious endeavours in the following areas: a) Content authoring: better ICT support for creativity and experience; novel forms of interactive and expressive content; b) Content workflow: automated, metadata based content flows encompassing novel and legacy content assets; c) Personalisation, contextualisation and dynamic device adaptation; technologies for personalised distribution and immersive consumption of adaptive content; d) Knowledge management systems for organisations and communities exploiting semantic clues embedded in multimedia resources, data streams and ICT-based processes; e) Semantic foundations: moving beyond current formalisms, catering for probabilistic and temporal modelling and approximate reasoning; web integration of heterogeneous data sources.
Complete Talk
Roberto Cencioni is a 1974 graduate from the University of Rome with a degree in statistics. Project leader in charge of software development and computer operations within a major telecommunications company, he joined the European Commission in 1977 and worked initially on a large-scale machine translation project. He then managed several teams developing distributed office and communication systems until the early 1990s, when he was entrusted with the co-ordination of R&D programmes in the area of speech and language technologies. Mr. Cencioni's responsibilities included non-research programmes such as MLIS and eContent until mid-2001, when he was appointed as the head of the Information Society Directorate-General unit managing the Safer Internet Action Plan and European research projects in the field of information access and multimedia content management. Mr. Cencioni heads the unit entrusted with R&D activities in the area of knowledge and interactive content technologies since January 2003.
Luis Rodriguez-Rosello
Head of Unit, INFSO.D2, Networked Audio Visual Systems
Directorate General Information Society and Media
Convergence of telecommunications (either fixed or mobile) with audiovisual content is leading to the birth of a new industrial sector spurred by an increasing demand of innovative services from a new generation of very demanding users who are becoming fully aware of the new possibilities offered by technologies. Users as new service and content creators, access to distributed repositories of materials, new ways of interaction with content and service personalisation are some of the emerging trends.
Future Information and Communication Technologies and Systems will be networked, mobile, seamless, scalable, embedded, intelligent, personalised, content-rich, interactive and experiential. Two key trends should underpin these developments: ensuring social acceptance of innovation by considering from the outset users needs, putting the user at the centre and putting a special emphasis on standards and interoperability. Both are key conditions for global leadership of European ICT industry.
We should not forget that in this fast developing area increasing R&D efforts represents more and more a precondition for future competitiveness and even survival. FP7 should help the industrial and research community to better structure and coordinate R&D in order to reach common objectives of industrial and societal relevance what promises tangible payoffs in the mid to long term. In this respect the European Technology Platform NEM (Networked Electronic Media) is an important instrument to build up critical mass and to coordinate European endeavours. The process to create a shared vision, 10 years into the future, enables main stakeholders to align long term developments and research policies. It is hoped that this will increase overall R&D investment by the private sector, accrued cooperation with academia and public sector in general, as beyond today's hard competition we also need to support risk taking and creativity.
Luis Rodriguez-Rosello holds a degree of Telecommunications Engineering (Universidad Politcnica de Madrid). After some years of professional activity as engineer at a private company and as full professor at the Faculty of Telecommunications and Engineering Madrid in Computer Science and Control Systems. He was Director of the Research and Development Department at the ITE (Institute for Technologies in Education) of the Ministry of Education in Spain and later on Head of the International Department of the CDTI (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnolgico e Industrial).
He joined the European Commission in 1989 as Head of Division in Directorate-General "Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research" as responsible for the R&D Programme DELTA (Developing European Learning through Technological Advance), "Telematics for Flexible and Distance Learning and Research Networking". He also headed the Educational Multimedia Task Force of the European Commission. He was acting Director in 2003 and 2004 of Directorate "Emerging Technologies, Infrastructures. Applications" of Directorate General Information Society, a new Directorate he had been entrusted to set up. Domains of responsibility encompassed basic research (Future and Emerging Technologies), Grid Technologies, Research Infrastructures and application areas related to eInclusion and eWork. He was chairman of the Research Infrastructures Committee. End 2004 he was appointed Head of the Unit "Networked Audiovisual Systems".
A number of bilateral sessions is scheduled to discuss potential project ideas in FP7. A maximum of 8-9 sessions will take place on December 7/8, 2006, either with Roberto Cencioni / Albert Gauthier or Luis Rodriguez-Rosello, with a typical duration of 15-20 min. Interested individuals or groups should send, by November 24 (Closed), an initial expression of interest to , identifying which ICT area/unit comes closer to their centre of interest, or giving a brief description of their idea(s) with a few keywords.
Project proposers will be requested to send a one or two page description of the potential project idea and expected questions to the EC officers by December 1. Exact dates, times and room locations will then be assigned based on the collected information.