ICT: Resolving society’s challenges
Three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) have so far been developed as part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The first KIC to be created was EIT ICT Labs, which focuses on building European leadership in ICT. The KIC is based on the knowledge triangle, linking together research, innovation and education.
Professor Dr Willem Jonker, chief executive of ICT Labs, outlined to horizon2020projects.com the KIC’s high impact initiatives, how it will address the societal challenges in the next framework programme, and his thoughts on how to best close Europe’s widening skills gap.
ICT in Europe
The key aim of ICT Labs is to address the ICT innovation in Europe. In Europe, and also in the area of ICT, we have very good education, very good research and very good infrastructure, e.g. broadband productivity. We are also leading the world in certain areas, especially in mobile technologies and embedded systems. Nevertheless, that ‘take-out’ of ICT results from the laboratory to the market could be improved compared to the United States and Asia.
ICT Labs aims to build an organisation and ecosystem that is really driving an uptake of R&D results to the market. The KIC also aims to ensure we have a very good education system so that people are able to get the maximum out of all these new technologies in ICT. ICT is one of the most disruptive technologies of our time – it is moving at a very high speed. Technology cycles are extremely short if you compare it to climate or energy. In this highly dynamic environment, ICT labs is there to educate and innovate in order to make sure that Europe is a global player and that European industries are competitive.
High impact initiatives
We have a very balanced high impact investment in education, business and innovation. Our main high impact initiative is our pan-European master’s school. There are 19 universities signed up to a uniform ICT master’s programme with the deep embedding of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is unique as it has a quarter of the course focusing purely on initiatives and innovation. It also has a mobility element, which means that students start in one of our nodes during the first year, move onto a second node in the second year, and then receive two Master of Science degrees plus the EIT ICT Labs certificate. The school has dramatically increased in size since 2012, from about 90 students to more than 200; another doubling is anticipated in 2014, making it the largest ICT master’s programme.
Another high impact project is on health and wellbeing. We are heavily investing in preventive healthcare based on vital body signal monitoring. We are addressing stress and cardiovascular diseases, which are huge societal issues and by completing very early monitoring and lifestyle changes, we can do a lot of prevention research, enormously reducing costs in this domain.
Societal challenges
ICT and the digital world are an important part of society. The technology has really influenced our lives and there is great drive for further development in information sharing and efficiency, something that will affect society as a whole.
ICT is also everywhere. If you consider a car, it is a computer with wheels. Probably within five years, you will be able to run a car without petrol or diesel, but you can’t run a car without ICT. The same is true with medical systems: if you consider MRI scanners, the key is the enormous software that is embedded in the systems that forms the raw signal and reconstructs information that medical practitioners can interpret. Our work plans reflect this and we have projects on health and wellbeing, mobility, future cities, smart energy and cyber fiscal systems, which are critical ICT infrastructures.
Consequently, we have dedicated activities in those action lines addressing the key societal challenges, working closely together with the key actors in those domains and the core ICT players developing innovations that realise that ICT increasingly impacts on their business. Increasingly organisations are recognising ICT as a key enabling technology and a strategic asset in their product portfolio.
Europe’s skills gap
Europe today has a very serious skills gap and we have two solutions: first, you need to attract more people to technical education in general, in addition to ICT education specifically and secondly women are also under-represented and we need to address a gender imbalance in the sector.
We need to increase the technical skills of citizens and invest in STEM education and we need to offer courses to improve ICT skills that can deliver results in the short-term, as well as increase mobility.
Through a combination of the above, there will be a long-term investment in education, an improvement in citizens’ skill set and greater mobility within Europe.
Professor Dr Willem Jonker
