DoSSIER (Domain Specific Systems for Information Extraction and Retrieval) will elucidate, model, and address the different information needs of professional users. It mobilizes an excellent and highly synergistic team of world-leading Information Retrieval (IR) experts from 5 EU States who, together with 3 academic partners (universities in US, Japan, and Australia), and 11 industrial partners (dynamic SMEs and large corporations) will produce fundamental insights into how users comprehend, formulate, and access information in professional environments. For this, DoSSIER takes a highly innovative intersectorial and multidisciplinary approach, addresses fundamental questions about the nature and representation of information needs, engages in novel qualitative and quantitative evaluation, and provides training towards a structured, rigorous, and practical approach to search systems. It connects premier universities and outstanding industrial partners to provide unique opportunities to young researchers. The research is structured in three areas: 1. fundamental models of users and domain specificity, 2. contextual and personalized search, and 3. workflow, task and the interface. Each area individually and in cross-field fertilisation, will produce breakthroughs in our understanding of computer-supported human information search workflows. The result will be a new generation of information access systems, which will accelerate innovation cycles in EU academia and industry, as well as in society as a whole. To be both concrete and generic, DoSSIER consists of 8 projects identifying a target domain and 7 projects acting horizontally across domains. Three vital domains are used: science & technology innovation, law, and healthcare. Questions currently unanswerable (e.g. What is the key innovation difference between these two patents?) will be answerable either directly by a system, or by the development of cognition-enhancing instruments for interacting with information.

<< Background >>Motivated by the overwhelming positive feedback on previous projects achievements that gave blind and visually impaired people access to museums (partner Economica) or to architecture using 3D technology (partner Trnka), we decided to explore and address the needs of a particularly vulnerable group – blind and visually impaired children. Communication with school teachers from four countries in preparation of the project made the need for adequate teaching tools as well as the desire to benefit from common transnational efforts highly evident. The “TaTaBook” project will address the special needs of blind and visually impaired pupils for comprehensive, knowledge-transferring and fun-to-use learning materials by developing tailor-made 3D-based teaching tools supplemented with audio and online learning contents. Their development is a highly interactive process between schools from all countries and engages professionals in all relevant fields – 3D, IT, didactics, natural sciences, science communication. Most importantly, the final beneficiaries – teachers and children – take part in tool development by testing and commenting on intermediate prototypes. Moreover, the participating teachers will not only receive innovative learning materials and methods, but also gain competencies in 3D printing and become interconnected through a dedicated platform for knowledge exchange to encourage further cooperation and exchange.<< Objectives >>We want to set the critical steps that foster a better inclusion of blind and visually impaired children. By supporting teachers with strongly-needed tools, by expanding their digital competencies and by interconnecting them with colleagues abroad who are facing similar challenges, the project aims to strengthen international cooperation between schools with visually impaired and blind people to increase the international cooperation as well as the exchange of knowledge and experiences. We want to make both teaching and learning more enjoyable and fruitful and let children experience and further develop their superior tactile abilities that are among others demanded in their private and professional future, e.g. in the medical field for sensing early-stage cancer tissue.<< Implementation >>We will implement a set of activities, including five transnational meetings that focus on specific result-related topics (e.g. 3D printing, learning contents, etc.). One workshop, which will be coupled with a transnational project meeting, will give an introduction to 3D-printing. Four more workshops (learning and teaching activities) focusing on the target group – teachers of visually impaired pupils – specific development of the teaching contents will take place – one in each school. Finally, the results will be presented in the multiplier event in Vienna at the end of the project. Here the final results (microlearnings, TaTaBook and platform) will be presented to invited representative from target groups and beneficiaries, i.e. teachers and pupils.<< Results >>There are four types of project results: 1) the innovative teaching tools for teachers, i.e. learning materials for blind and (primarily though not exclusively) visually impaired children, 2) in the format of a talking, tactile “book”, 3) the corresponding learning content which will be supported by online micro-learning materials, that are accessible via a platform (which additionally serves to exchange 3D-printing plans, audio files, microlearning contents and day-to-day communication between partners, and 4) a comprehensive report about the lessons learned in the project, which will also be available on the platform for the public (especially for schools that are not part of the project but are interested in the project results). In order to facilitate ongoing cooperation and dissemination, the exchange platform will in the end represent a freely accessible database of teaching topics and subjects. In preparation of the project, participating schools already decided on 4 topics (orientation & mobility, the human body, the journey of Magellan, and geology). For these topics respective teaching contents will be elaborated. Importantly, the outcomes will be strictly tailor-made, since development of learning contents and ways of presentation as tactile book happens in an interactive way. More precisely, input and feedback from teachers and children will be collected at a regular basis. Not only will these contents imply the design of the respective tactile teaching book, but also the selection of additional materials that – where appropriate - support the children's perception, enabling a more explorative learning process, e.g. through addressing their olfactory sense. In the end there will be 4 different tactile books – each with a specific topic, but available as own copy to each participating project partner. These books will be produced via 3D printing as on the one hand this allows a more detailed presentation of topics (detailed, refined surface features) and on the other hand facilitates dissemination and reproduction. Importantly, although the same “hardware” (tactile book) materials are being used for all age groups, audio description and additional materials may vary, depending on age and level of knowledge. Further, the project outcomes encompass: an overall improvement in the education of blind and visually impaired children that strongly promotes their social inclusion and raises their self-esteem; long-lasting teaching competencies that complement current curricula and that make schools and teachers keep pace with novel opportunities arising from digital transformation; a better-connected international community whose individual endeavours on helping blind and visually impaired ones become mutually beneficial and more efficient.

As privacy and trust remain key in the data sharing debate, Privacy enhancing technologies (PET) will play a prominent role by 2025. Safe-DEED takes a highly interdisciplinary approach, bringing together partners from cryptography, data science, business innovation, and legal domain to focus on improving Security technologies, improving trust as well as on the diffusion of Privacy enhancing technologies to keep up pace with global macrotrends and the data economy, to enable the fastest possible growth. Furthermore, as it has been recently shown that even among large companies, many have no data valuation process in place, Safe-DEED provides a set of tools to facilitate the assessment of data value, thus incentivising data owners to make use of the scalable cryptographic protocols developed in Safe-DEED to create value for their companies and their clients.