Our proposed GEIGER will be an innovative solution with associated components and an Education Ecosystem addressing security, privacy and data protection risks of and for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Microenterprises (SMEs&MEs) in Europe. GEIGER will be developed in analogy of a GEIGER counter for detecting atomic radiation threatening human life. The GEIGER solution will be used for assessing, monitoring, and forecasting risks and reducing these risks by improving the SMEs’&MEs’ security with well-curated tools, and an education program targeting practitioners-in-practice as “Certified Security Defenders” bringing security expertise sustainably to SMEs&MEs using existing vocational education frameworks. GEIGER consist of a GEIGER Indicator that dynamically summarizes the current level of risk by evaluating measures undertaken for security defences among the participating SMEs&MEs. The GEIGER Indicator can be personalised by registering the enterprise’s profile and supports GDPR-compliant sharing and exchanging data about incidents. The GEIGER Toolbox allows stepwise do-it-yourself assessment and improvement of the SMEs’&MEs’ security, privacy, and data protection with lightweight controls and advice for improved protection at varied levels of sophistication. The included tools offer endpoint, server, and network protection and guide the SME&ME in a personalised manner in data hygiene, including access and security control, data privacy management, and backup practices. The GEIGER Education Ecosystem offers experimental-based training and cyber range-enabled challenges and will be integrated into curricula of diverse professions of non-ICT experts, offering direct impact on SMEs&MEs through target group-oriented education. The GEIGER solution will be demonstrated in three complementary use cases within three countries. GEIGER will achieve sustainable impact by raising awareness of more than one million SMEs&MEs within a period of 2.5 years after start.

Research careers are often shaped early and can be difficult to redirect later, with many early-stage researchers (R1 and R2) in the EU facing challenges in navigating diverse career paths. Fragmented transitions between academia, industry, the public sector, and entrepreneurial ventures—along with the absence of cohesive frameworks—have hindered career mobility, skill development, and employability, particularly in fast-growing fields such as AI, digital transformation, and deep tech. NextTechTalents addresses these challenges by creating talent ecosystems that integrate these sectors, ensuring researchers gain the skills to transition between academia and non-academic environments, including entrepreneurial opportunities. By supporting researchers in building various skills, the project helps them commercialise innovations and pursue different ventures, contributing to a sustainable talent pool across the European Research Area. NextTechTalents, aligned with the goals of the European Research Area, aims to create a robust and sustainable talent ecosystem, fostering talent circulation across sectors and enhancing employability and mobility. The project develops tailored career services, mentoring programs, and training modules based on the ResearchComp framework to equip researchers with the tools for both academic and non-academic pathways. NextTechTalents, will create a comprehensive Handbook for HR managers and training providers within research and innovation organizations. This handbook will guide the integration of the NextTechTalents Training System, promote interdisciplinary skills acquisition, and strengthen collaboration across academia, industry, and entrepreneurial ventures. By addressing mobility, cross-sector employability, and inclusive career support, the project will help early-stage researchers thrive in evolving, competitive sectors.

The overall aim is to expand the impact and adoption of Space Tech by bringing together Space start-ups, SMEs, entrepreneurs and the IoT ecosystem to increase commercial relevance of the technologies across industrial sectors and accelerate their access to market and/or scaling. We will achieve this by designing and orchestrating a collaborative ecosystem with adapted tools and instruments that will position a greater number of space-enabled technologies in industrial markets. This ecosystem will be based on a blended community of IoT and Space that brings together a range of stakeholders, large and small, from academia, business and the public sector not just across the three local ecosystems that are directly taking part. The specific objectives are to: • Identify promising tech generated within the European space ecosystem that are susceptible to being used in Industry. • Identify SMEs, tech start-ups and founders who could benefit from space technologies through a range of local activities. • Design and deliver an acceleration programme for early stage space and IoT tech companies. • Facilitate access to innovative financial support to them consolidate their market offering and grow. • Increase the commercialisation and industry adoption of space tech. • Create a Europe-wide network of Space entrepreneurs . We will start by scouting promising space technologies that can be brought to market from across Europe. Their market relevance will be explored by stakeholders through locally delivered design studios. The ventures with the greatest potential will then be supported through an intensive 3+3 month acceleration programme than will build the founders capacity and further enable them to build and implement their go to market strategies. Over the 2 year period, t240 space and data technologies will be explored; the market potential of 90 of these will be scrutinised and 30-45 startups/ventures will have been helped to scale.

The proposed project aims at (a) identifying skills shortages and gaps in the labor market for different regions, sectors,time periods (b) supporting all kinds of enterprises in developing their human resource strategy, including both training of current employees, and skill shaping of future employees, (c) supporting recruiting enterprises looking for specific skills, (d) supporting EU citizens in developing their skills in an informed way and eventually finding a suitable job and e) aiming to find good candidates for emerging roles, but also to equip existing employees with the necessary skills to retain their jobs, thus improving job retainability and reducing employee churn.The project will meet its goals by designing and implementing an intelligent platform for managing labor market skills and skill gaps. The system will monitor and mine internet resources and EU initiatives to acquire and process meaningful raw data about existing and sought skills, and entities offering and seeking jobs. State-of-the-art IT technologies will be used to empower the platform and achieve its goals, including advanced statistical and network and data analysis, machine learning and competency mining. On the basis of such analyses, recommendation tools for HRM, educational profile upskilling and digital policies will be made available to users. The system will offer its findings in an easy, human-centric with SSH principles, ready to use, and ethically correct form to both enterprises and individuals. Such objectives are highly relevant to the objectives of the call. In particular, it is expected that the project will contribute to the multi-faceted assessment of the labor market status through its data acquiring and analysis tools. Continuous monitoring will allow for detecting current and future trends and gaps in requested and processed skills. The platform will offer a knowledge base for recommendation tools to develop skill strategies both for enterprises and individuals.

The UFO project is based on two main assumptions. First, business opportunities lie in the combination of space data with digital technologies and other sources of data. Embedded Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) into small flying objects (SFOs - drones, small satellites, high altitude platforms) represent a great opportunity to collect additional aerospace data, especially to drive the Artificial Intelligence revolution for various global applications. Second, the value added applications in Europe are mostly driven by SMEs. Thus, the UFO project aims at fostering the development of cross-sectoral industrial value chains between 6 emerging industries (Mobility technologies, Environmental, Blue Growth, Digital, Experience and Cultural and Creative industries), SFOs, embedded KETs and data analysis and exploitation solutions stimulating the development of new products and services by SMEs. To achieve this, the consortium provides a systemic and strategic vision. Clusters, which gather SMEs, large groups, R&D actors, and other innovation entities, are crucial to create links between different value chains, basically the data providers and the information product providers that turn raw data into valuable information. The UFO consortium and associate partner consisting of 8 emerging industry clusters including 5 SFOs, embedded KETs, ICT clusters, representing more than 1000 SMEs throughout 6 different EU countries and sectors. The partners have the capacity to carry such actions as they will foster partnerships between the different links (their members) of value chains and provide them incentives through the launch of call for proposals providing Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) and innovation services provided by clusters. They represent some of Europe’s most dynamic clusters including Gold and Bronze labelled ones with a history of cooperation, a track record of supporting innovation actions for SMEs.