Air pollution is a significant global concern causing an estimated 4.2 million deaths annually due to diseases related to poor air quality. Climate change is exacerbating air quality issues and posing unprecedented challenges to the existing air quality monitoring systems, which mainly utilize sparse and expensive terrestrial stations and satellites, leading to limited accuracy and flexibility. To address these challenges, REFINE aims to form an international, multidisciplinary, and cross-sectoral consortium with world-leading researchers to create a novel real-time fine-grained air quality monitoring system empowered by advanced technologies in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Wireless Networking. Specifically, REFINE will pioneer research and innovations (R&I) on ground-breaking technologies including: 1) a robust and scalable system architecture for aerial-terrestrial air quality monitoring; 2) intelligent and efficient multi-UAV cooperation strategies for dynamic and flexible area coverage; 3) ultra-resilient and secure aerial-terrestrial networking schemes for reliable and efficient data transmission; 4) lightweight and robust AI methods for accurate and real-time air quality analysis. REFINE will establish a long-term cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge-sharing platform with competent and complementary expertise in Computer Science, Environmental Science, and Communication Engineering. The researchers involved will be trained through substantial R&I actions and well-planned networking activities at both European and global levels to enrich their skills and enhance their career perspectives. REFINE will significantly contribute to achieving the EU’s zero-pollution ambition and enhancing European competitiveness, through transforming the current air quality monitoring systems into a new generation, which is able to provide real-time intelligent monitoring of vast rural areas with higher precision and efficiency.

To satisfy the expected plethora of demanding services, 6G is envisioned as a revolutionary paradigm to carry forward the capacities of enhanced broadband, massive access, and Ultra-reliable and low latency services in 5G wireless networks to a more robust and intelligent level. This move will introduce significant new multidisciplinary research challenges emerging throughout the wireless communication protocol stacks, including the way the mobile network is modelled and deployed. The structure of 6G networks will be highly heterogeneous, densely deployed, and dynamic. Combined with the tight quality of services, such complex architecture will result in the untenability of legacy network operation routines. In response, artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning (ML), Semantic Communication and Digital Twin (DT) are emerging as solutions to realize the fully intelligent network orchestration and management. By learning from uncertain and dynamic environments, AI-enabled channel estimation and spectrum management will open up opportunities for bringing the excellent performance of Ultra-broadband techniques into full play. Additionally, challenges brought by Ultra-massive access concerning energy and security can be mitigated by applying AI-based approaches. The overall research objective of the SCION project is to develop and design the network systems for seamless wireless access for Secure and Intelligent Massive Machine-to-Machine Communications for 6G. In addition to technology development, to meet the urgent needs for the future working force of the coming 6G era, this collaborative project will create a training network for Doctoral Candidates who will contribute to the design and implementation of future 6G networks.

The emergence of quantum computing as a transformative technology has made secure hardware and software development an imperative. Quantum computing’s potential depends on robust, secure infrastructures that support quantum algorithms while addressing vulnerabilities. However, rapid development often prioritizes functionality and speed over security, creating gaps in comprehensive quantum-specific security practices, as highlighted by agencies like ENISA and NIST. Such gaps pose risks due to quantum algorithms' complex attack surfaces, which traditional security solutions cannot adequately address. This challenge is especially pertinent in the European Union (EU), where it is essential to integrate security engineering in both software and hardware development, ensuring compliance with EU standards and providing auditable quantum systems. The SecQdevOps project tackles these critical issues by creating a secure, continuous DevOps pipeline explicitly designed for quantum software and hardware development. Leveraging quantum high-level programming languages like Qiskit and Eclipse QRISP, alongside secure hardware-aware compilers, SecQdevOps provides automated security assessments and real-time vulnerability detection to build efficient, trustworthy quantum applications resilient to cyber threats. A unique aspect of SecQdevOps is the Internet of Quantum Things (IoQT), a distributed platform that connects emulated quantum devices across multiple secure nodes for collaborative testing and development, offering a secure “playground” for next-generation developers.

Reactive Too: Reliable Electronics for Tomorrow’s Active Systems is a research-focused project that brings together a unique team of academic and industrial members. This team will form a tight confederation to tackle challenging aspects of reliability and future developments in electronic systems. European organisations from Finland, France, Poland and the UK are involved. Each partner country will supply both industrial and academic units. ReACTIVE Too will do research into design for reliability for electronics-based systems. This includes the introduction of an agile hardware development cycle with virtual techniques to uniquely address reliability and physical validation in active safety systems. Exemplar systems from partner companies in Automotive and Healthcare will be used to validate the ideas. Finnish partners who have a track record in wearable electronics will bring their research in smart textiles to the team. Innovation in terms of design and integration of these smart textiles into the challenging environments of automotive and care homes will enhance driver information and ambient assisted living. The project team is very privileged to have French partners doing world-leading research and production of unique devices in energy harvesting. Further innovation in ReACTIVE Too will bring novel flexible energy harvesters for integration into many sensors. Industrially leading work is planned to be led by Polish partners to investigate the possibilities of applying AI, deep learning and prognostics to future electronics systems. These innovations should allow a unique assessment of long term reliability and shorten development cycle times, saving energy and money. The team will be developed through a series of workshops and secondments. Future plans will be developed during these interactions to target new research and innovation topics and more intense interactions by making future joint funding proposals.