UMITA (Ultrasound Medical Imaging: from Theory to Applications) is an Innovative Training Network (ITN) whose main objective will be to train researchers in a multidisciplinary environment, at the border between signal and image processing, applied mathematics, ultrasound instrumentation, clinical and industrial applications. Ultrasound (US) imaging is the gold standard technique in numerous medical applications, such as the cardiovascular or cancer diseases addressed by UMITA. However, it still suffers from several limitations including low spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, low frame rate for specific applications, and huge quantity of data in 3D acquisitions. As device-related solutions based on current technologies approach their physical limitations, performance improvements can be achieved using novel post-processing techniques. Researchers with multidisciplinary skills in the fields addressed by UMITA are the solution to tackle these very challenging issues in US imaging. The early-stage-researchers (ESR) recruited by UMITA will take advantage of this unique combination of physics, mathematics, engineering and medical training. The activities of UMITA will be performed in close interaction with the industry, through the active participation of at least three companies: CAMELOT, VICOMTECH-IK4 and ESAOTE. Furthermore, clinical applications are part of this work and thus the relevant skills are brought through three clinical teams : University of Pisa, Medical team of Prof. Carlo Palombo, Cardiff University Wales Heart Research Institute, team of Prof. Alan G Fraser, and University of Lyon, Medical team of Creatis. The multidisciplinary scientific training of UMITA ESRs will be completed with complementary skills essential for their future academic or industrial careers. The workshops organized by the non-academic partners of UMITA will give them a complete view of the industrial environment. The numerous occasions to present their work (e.g., international conferences, UMITA meetings, dissemination of their results to general public) will help them to acquire high communication skills. The lectures about ethics in science provided during the summer schools organized by UMITA will give them a different perspective on how their future research will interact with our society. The meetings organized with spin off creators will allow them to understand that a balance between scientific and complementary skills is mandatory to success in their future careers. Thus, the major objective of this network is to conduct interdisciplinary research and provide training to early stage researchers (ESRs) that will allow them to develop innovative US imaging expertise associated to advanced signal and image processing techniques. Besides developing complementary skills such as scientific communication, the ESRs formed by UMITA (Ultrasound Medical Imaging: from Theory to Applications) will develop multiple expertises, in signal and image processing, US instrumentation, industrial and clinical applications. These multidisciplinary skills will allow them to address important challenges in the field of medical imaging.

Specialisation in literature and cultural studies is often accompanied by the loss of vital connections. The separation between Anglophone and Francophone literatures, and between classical and contemporary literary and cultural studies are examples of how connections can be lost. ‘Mediterranean Imaginaries: Literature, Arts, Culture’ presents the particular space of this sea as an area of study, thereby providing a platform where scholars with different specialisations can meet. The Intensive Study Programme (ISP) is highly innovative in studying not only how literature and other art forms are produced in the Mediterranean, but also how the Mediterranean has been represented and “produced” by other “North European” cultures, historically and more recently. The ISP takes account of very recent literature and films that feature current forms of migration as well as developments on the Southern Mediterranean shores (the so-called “Arab spring” and the recent waves of migration ), and their representation. The two week ISP features lectures given by specialists in the field and these are followed by all the students. While attending all the lectures and their discussion, the specialist workshops, organised in two series co-ordinated by the academic advisers to the project, allow students to choose between the two different workshop series, so that students can achieve more focused specialisation on particular areas of the curriculum. Seminar A concentrates on classical representations of the Mediterranean while Seminar B has a more contemporary focus. The students all attend a number of joint seminars (A+B) that allow them to share learning and research. Students from Malta, Goldsmiths, Nova Gorica, Minho, Cagliari, Florence and Carthage will benefit from the large pool of experts lecturing in the Intensive Study Programme. Students will achieve knowledge of a range of texts and films representing aspects of the Mediterranean, they will learn to identify literature and cultures from different periods and different areas, as well as influences between texts. Students will study how different works construct Mediterranean culture, history or geography, how cultural encounters, clashes or exchanges are represented in various texts, and how these, in turn, impact on their national literatures.The syllabus of ‘Mediterranean Imaginaries: Literature, Arts, Culture’ enables students who are at a distance from the Mediterranean sea to study literature and culture from this region. The topic will draw scholars and students working in comparative, Anglophone and Francophone literary studies as well as others from disciplines such as history , cultural studies, film studies, visual arts, and philosophy, thus presenting a strong multidisciplinary approach. Through the ISP, important cross-cultural perspectives and opinions will be shared amongst participants and students. This would not be possible if the module was run separately at the 7 universities. The follow-up events - the post-graduate conferences organized by the UOM's Department of English - at the end of the ISP in 2017 and 2018 give opportunities to all the students to present their collaborative work to a wider audience. As these conferences will also include literature culture related to the Mediterranean, the students extend their knowledge of these subjects even further. The follow-up events in London in June 2017 and 2018 again call for collaborative work from all the students. The work will be presented by 4 of the Maltese students and by the 6 Goldsmiths students who have attended the ISP at the conference of the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies or of the Goldsmiths Literature Seminar. As the Maltese students do not benefit from mobility for the ISP, it is appropriate that they should have the opportunity to go to London to work in a different academic environment.The Strategic Partnership as a whole widens the horizons of the students and academics taking part and makes them more aware of the wealth of knowledge on Mediterranean affairs harboured in 6 European and 1 North African university. This will enhance the international competitiveness of the participating universities. Students will also become more conscious of the practical ways in which literature can influence society, for example, by addressing issues related to migration, racism and xenophobia in the Mediterranean and beyond, thus enhancing their value as European citizens, and increasing their employability. Number of participants per year requiring funding For Intensive Study Programme Goldsmiths College : 4 academics, 6 students each year Florence: 1 academic, 3 students each year Cagliari: 1 academic, 3 students each year Minho: 1 academic, 3 students each year Nova Gorica: 1 academic, 3 students each year For Blended Mobility Malta 1 academic 4 students each year

<< Background >>The project underlines the need to improve university education in the agricultural sector to train students on the relevant skills for becoming agripreneurs 4.0 (which is currently barely absent. It becomes fundamental for academics to develop new collaborations with other Universities, but also companies working in the sector (providers of Precision Agriculture services) and PA farmers, in order to have an overall vision on the field and being able to foresight technologic and market changes<< Objectives >>One of the aims of SPARKLE was to bring together research, Sustainable Precision Agriculture (SPA) farmers, and students to develop and fill the gap in the educational offer to prepare farmers and agriculture's business managers of the future. The project aimed to develop and release an e-learning educational offer keeping together entrepreneurial competencies and SPA knowledge, thanks to the practical experience of SPA farmers, providers of SPA services and according to students’ needs.<< Implementation >>The pilot test phase let 206 students become “agripreuners 4.0” across Partner countries. Pilot actions executed in different Countries tested the flexibility, adaptability and transferability of the developed educational outputs enabling multiplication in various cultural environments, both in the Partnership and outside. Moreover, the quality of educational outputs was cross-validated among participants of various backgrounds and geographic settings and collectively improved when necessary.<< Results >>The main result of the project was the creation of a new training program for university students, agri-entrepreneurs, academics, service providers, school students in the form of an e-Learning course, in order­­ to enhance their technical, business-oriented skills and entrepreneurial activity in a smart environment. The course was composed of 12 modules on SPA-related topics, 8 hours of entrepreneurial education, 4 hours of on-field activities. Additional training resources were also provided.

The Talents project focused on a new form of comprehensive language and professional training for immigrants and refugees with the aim to support their fast access to the labour market – as jobs are considered to be the most important basis for successful integration. Project partners from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Norway and Sweden commonly developed and tested new strategies of integration in countries and regions which welcomed high numbers of refugees and which, in general, have high immigration rates. The heart and driving force of the project was the “Hotel Talents” project of the City of Göteborg - an innovative fast-track programme for immigrants and refugees that combines vocational language training with practical experience at the workplace. The Talents trainings prepare participants for a first job within a short period of several months and build a direct track to the labour market. The parallel, alternating structure of classroom language and professional training and internship in companies led to promising results. High employment rates of participants after the trainings in Sweden proved that the concept is effective and a suitable measure to increase employment rates among persons with migration background. In the course of the Talents project, the Göteborg role model was transferred to Germany and Norway, and the Swedish partners extended and further developed their fast track concepts as well as upskilling initiatives. The goal was to test the fast-track training model in different legal, financial and structural frameworks focussing on main characteristics of fast track and necessary functions to be taken over in the context of such concepts. In Germany and Norway, Talents fast-track trainings and curricula were developed in the sectors hotel and gastronomy, retail trade, warehouse and logistics as well as building and construction Moreover, some project partners developed fast-track trainings for immigrants and refugees with an academic background, e.g. for doctors, for persons who finished pedagogical and social studies or hold a degree in business administration. In Göteborg, fast-track trainings have meanwhile been developed for more than 50 professions. In addition, upskilling pathways were designed in Sweden to guarantee that career options and the perspective of a second and a third job are available.The Talents project partners are main stakeholders of integration in their countries on different levels and in different fields. They are responsible for the political and strategic steering of education and integration on the regional and local level, they are experts in the field of validation and guidance, they offer language classes and vocational training and do research on integration issues. The following institutions contributed to the Talents project: Volkshochschulverband Baden-Württemberg e.V. (Co-ordinator) / DE, Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und Sport Baden-Württemberg / DE, Göteborgs Stad / SE, Cuben Utbildning AB / SE, Oslo Voksenopplæring Rosenhof / NO, Steirische Volkswirtschaftliche Gesellschaft / AT, Università degli studi di Firenze / IT, and EARLALL (Association Européenne des Autorités Régionales et Locales pour l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie) / European, based in Belgium. Outputs of the Talents project are: 1.) a European modular tool box, providing training concepts, curricula, pedagogical material, and other training documents for practitioners carrying out fast-track trainings, 2.) a competence balancing App to support the exchange on necessary competences for a certain job between employer, trainee, teachers, and coaches, 3.) a study on the project activities and 4.) curricula for trainings for language teachers and guidance counsellors that work in fast-track training programmes. During the project lifetime of three years, the project reached up to 9000 participants, among them staff of all project partners, counsellors and teachers participating in trainings, staff in companies and partner institutions involved, persons receiving guidance in connection to training activities, participants in 20 pilot training courses, users of the European toolbox and modules of the training concept, persons who will participate in Talents courses in- and outside the project within five years from the project start, persons who have a profit from improved guidance and training in partner organisations and other institutions and persons reached through other dissemination activities like press articles. The Talents project contributed to the successful integration of immigrants on the local and regional level. Talents classes have high access rates to full employment. Talents motivated a large number of follow-up initiatives in the Talents regions with additional budgets of several million Euro, it initiated structural changes on local and regional level land was a role model for national and EU initiatives to tackle the refugees crisis.

The COLORI proposal is devoted to the theoretical description, the numerical modeling, and the experimental study of cold and ultracold molecular collisions driven by long-range forces in the presence of strongly confining external potentials. The project brings together one theoretical and one experimental team. The coordinator IPR-Rennes has a strong theoretical background in the molecular dynamics field, the LENS-Florence partner is internationally recognized for its experimental contribution to the study of atomic and molecular gases in the ultracold domain. Experimental groups worldwide have developed the capability to cool and manipulate a large variety of atomic, molecular, and ionic species, forming the extremely active quantum gases community. Binary collisions occupy a pivotal position in the ultracold gas realm. It suffices to mention that the efficacity of cooling schemes and the quantum phases of an ultracold gas are controlled by two-body elastic and inelastic scattering amplitudes. The quantitative understanding of cold collisions is therefore essential to interpret ongoing experiments on quantum gases. Fortunately, cold collisions can not only be accurately understood, but even accurately controlled. External fields are the tool of choice, capable of influencing the outcome of a collision either by directly modifying the translational motion or by manipulating the internal structure of the colliding partners. Two main research topics can be identified in our proposal. The first one is a joint theoretical and experimental study of confinement effects on collisions of polar KRb bosonic molecules. The experimental developments ongoing at LENS include the set-up of an extremely stable laser system for two-photon transfer of weakly bound molecules to the absolute ground state. This study should allow us to shed light on the long-range interplay between dipolar, electric and optical forces, an extremely interesting topic in view of controlling unwanted reactive chemical processes expected to limit the gas lifetime. Confinement effects will be studied in particular in optical lattices of different dimensionality and crystal symmetry. We expect a wealth of geometric resonance phenomena and lattice-induced scattering events to be accurately described using the numerical tools developed during the project. Novel methodological and computational approaches will have to be proposed to this aim. Inclusion of hyperfine couplings in molecular collisions should allow novel resonance patterns and quantum interference phenomena to be studied. The second part of the COLORI proposal will consider atom-ion collisions in the presence of hyperfine and dynamical ion trap effects. Novel routes to collision control will be investigated by taking into account the interplay of resonances due to internal hyperfine couplings with Landau quantization of motional ion states in a magnetic field. Yet unexplored micromotion effects will be studied in collisions of atoms with ions trapped in Paul traps using both time-independent and time-dependent wavepacket methods. The realization of atom-ion quantum gates and sympathetic cooling of ions by ultracold atoms are only few examples for which a quantitative modeling of collisions is strongly needed. Finally, the numerical codes we propose to develop are expected to set a benchmark for theories based on effective and perturbative approaches to scattering in confined environments. COLORI presents a good equilibrium of scientific tasks between the IPR and LENS partners in the proposal, and between senior and young researchers. Periodic informal meetings are foreseen for coordination purposes. Publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations in international meetings should help disseminating the main results of the present cooperative project.