The Samothrace Project is led by the University of Catania as the main Proponent. The project team is composed of 25 members, including public entities (Universities and Research Centres), as well as, private economic stakeholders (predominantly IT companies).
Samothrace is funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4, Component 2 Investment 1.5 (promoted by the European Union – NextGenerationEU). It aims at strengthening the R&D facilities, at creating ‘R&D innovation ecosystems’, and at establishing ‘Territorial R&D Leaders”. The project started at the end of 2022 and is scheduled to last 3 years.
The Innovation Ecosystem SAMOTHRACE seeks to leverage on a consolidated territorial expertise of Sicily in the field of microelectronics, as well as, of micro and nano technologies, reaching a high level of diffusion. In this way, the regional and national industrial scenario can be influenced. All activities deal with micro and nano technologies, microelectronics, materials, microsystems and devices. The methodologies and applications are based on the following six major areas: energy, health, smart mobility, environment, cultural heritage and smart agriculture. The Samothrace project aims at leaving an imprint far beyond the industrial domain.
SAMOTHRACE focuses mostly on the European Commission’s global challenge of ‘Digital, Industry and Space’. Moreover, the project also deals with other challenges, such as ‘Health’, ‘Energy and Mobility’, as well as, ‘Agriculture and Environment’.
Our activities are related to the processing and exploitation of data through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques. We are to use nanotechnologies integrated with additional sources of information in order to generate data. Those data are processed across the entire Data Value Chain. The access and processing of raw data generates new findings to support research and to create innovative territorial services. Research activities benefit from modern Artificial Intelligence technologies, such as Deep Learning, Augmented Analytics, Self-Supervised Learning, Transfer Learning, Computer Vision and are integrated with IoT and blockchain technologies.
The expected results of the project on our part are the transformation and interpretation – through AI – of the data coming from the development of new micro and nano technologies, integrating our expertise within the working group focused on software technologies (Spoke 7) , the project structure led by Meridionale Impianti and composed of innovative IT companies, focused on the software level of the project objectives.
Topnetwork and Spoke focus their activities on the development and integration of innovative technologies and features. The final goal is about greater environmental sustainability, based on four achievable objectives (Work Packages, hereinafter WP), in which Topnetwork is involved:
