UR-WISE aims to achieve long-term excellence, institutional recognition, visibility, and better integration of the host institution (FEUN) in the European Research Area. Led by ERA Chair holder, the project seeks to foster competitiveness in research funding by promoting institutional reforms at both system and organisational level. It aims to establish a permanent and excellent research group in the field of data-based policy analytics for resilient urban and regional development. This is to be achieved through clearly defined and measurable specific objectives: ● Establish an excellent research group fostering brain circulation and inter-sectoral mobility to create brain gain for FEUN, by increasing the number of R&I professionals relocated to ERA team and placing a strong emphasis on international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility; ● Implement structural changes at FEUN to enhance its institutional framework by joining international networks and associations, forming alliances with economic faculties, and establishing partnerships with research-intensive institutions; ● Increase FEUN’s research excellence and profile in data-driven policy analytics through training opportunities, mentorship programs and collaboration with global partners; ● Enact organisational changes to enhance contributions to knowledge-based economy and secure competitive research funds by upgrading research infrastructure, founding research institute, and forming partnerships with technology park; ● Conduct a series of research to enhance FEUN's capacity for policy advising at local and national levels, by utilising a multifaceted methodology integrating spatial analysis, citizen engagement and multidimensional evaluation techniques. The project leverages the ERA Chair holder's international network to establish collaborations, foster research excellence and attract outstanding scientists, thereby addressing the need for more and better links between R&I actors across the ERA.

"With the advancement of building technologies and automation, Smart Building Operators performs a variety of tasks in their role to implemented general building maintenance and tending to tenant complaints. Nowadays, it also includes responsibilities related to HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, usually installed and controlled by a BMS, BAS (building automation system) controls and even mechanical maintenance and plumbing. With the increasing application of green technologies and smart controls, energy management is required to measure and verify the viability of these new technologies and controls. Data and analytics are driving the advancement into new technologies and the building management and operation is changing at a pace not seen before. New and complicated incentives and programs are being offered by governments, aspiring to promote themselves as environmentally conscious, in an effort to encourage green technologies and reward those who curb their energy use. The use of IoTs (Internet of Things) can reduce the energy wastes. The IoT (Internet of Things) enabled BMS (Building Management Systems) is a brand new domain and current employees will definitely need in-service training. We call it an “Operator of Smart and Green/Sustainable Buildings”. But the Building Operators need to be able to understand these concepts, implement them properly to save energy and maintain them also properly.In most cases, the implementation of green technologies and knowledge of energy saving incentives and programs also becomes the responsibility of the building operator. Property and asset managers depend on their building operators and facilities managers to determine the viability of these programs and to analyze vast amounts of data being accumulated by BAS and on-site equipment. Needless to say that all of these responsibilities are a bit overwhelming and they also require expertise and training that is not entirely inherent to the building operator’s role. With this field becoming increasingly specialized and technical, the demands placed on building operators are much higher than before. It should also be noted that most building operators aren’t young, and most have between 10-20 years of experience in their positions. The change in technology during this period of time has been tremendous and we find a sharp contrast in how buildings are operated now versus how they were operated 20 years ago.Our project trained more than 60 building operators in the domains of managing ""buildings of the future"" in order to maintain required occupant comfort and comply with energy efficiency/ecology regulations. This includes areas such as Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, domotics, service robotics, etc. Аs such, our trained building operators are able to satisfy the tenants and keep them happy by making sure they are comfortable as well as ensured that the building is operated well and maintenance work is performed timely and effectively. Keeping the tenants happy is the first priority of a building operator as tenants consider them to be the face of the property management. Thanks to our project we have implemented steps for official inclusion of this new profession on national level in Serbia, Bulgaria and Cyprus. We have developed the following tangible INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS (available in EN, BG, GR & SER languages):IO1: Operator of Smart and Green/Sustainable Buildings ECVET compliant training curriculum and course materialIO2: Job profile of: Operator of Smart and Green/Sustainable Buildings (OPERATOR OF THE 21ST CENTURY)IO3: Mobile Learning Management System including training (interactive) videos to facilitate the understanding of concepts and examples and pre/self/post assessment - for Android and for iOS devicesAll project outputs are available in English, Bulgarian, Serbian and Greek languages. Access to the Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vet4sbo.mobileAccess to the iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vet4sbo/id1544915098Access to the Online portal: https://smart-building-operator.eu/elearning/?lang=enThe VET4SBO training enhanced VET learners' professional expertise. We have increased VET learners' opportunities for personal development and we have improved negotiation and mediation skills of the learners to ensure successful negotiations with the owners and facility managers. This training course provided on-the-job further extension of qualification and we have reached increased motivation and satisfaction from the results of VET education and in the daily work for learners above 18 years old. In addition, we have increased their sense of initiative and creativity towards use of new technical solutions in the areas of : internet of things, cyber-physical systems, domotics, service robotics. We have improved their ability to maintain required occupant comfort and comply with energy efficiency and ecology regulations."

"The current project ""Optimal use of ICT opportunities for educational and scientific conferences in global crises"" is aimed at improving the quality of higher education in conditions caused by crises similar to COVID-19. One of the specific characteristics of higher education as a high value of the knowledge created and transferred in education is the activity for organizing and conducting educational-scientific conferences. The sharp need for education and science to move entirely to distance form due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 has placed a number of universities that have reached a high level of scientific and educational credibility in a state of lack of preparedness and ability to maintain the level of conference events. To help universities maintain the quality they have achieved in the traditional academic standard, the partnership on this project will focus its efforts on illuminating the specifics of distance learning when organizing conference events in all components of organization and conduct, technical dimensions and recommendations. , as well as the qualification of the academic staff in the universities. This structures the project into three main activities - development of an intellectual product ""Guidelines for organizing and conducting conferences in remote form"" (the basis of project implementation), conducting training for teachers in order to gain sufficient understanding of the specific approach and new dimensions of quality and lastly, holding real conference events by the three university institutions. The partnership covers university institutions from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia (sports sciences), and an organization specializing in distance education from Malta. The project emphasizes the aspiration of the partners to achieve a significant regional impact along with the European challenges for general digital education. The target group of the project presents in the first place the teachers in the institutions of higher education. Upon completion of the project, the results of the implementation will be expressed in the following:-a tool will be created to actively confront obstacles in the educational process in emergencies such as the COVID-19 crisis and the need to move remotely to university activities;-conditions will be created for increasing the number of participants (including foreign ones) in educational and scientific conferences with a significant reduction of the spent resources;-a prerequisite will be created for increasing the use of distance conferences in the learning process through the developed skills of teachers to include them as a teaching method;-a document will be available - Guidelines for organizing and conducting remote conferences;-the widest possible access to the document at European and international level will be ensured by presenting it in English;-regional use will be achieved through translations into Bulgarian, Romanian and Serbian;-will create a basis for objectively establishing the quality of digital conferences as a means of developing education and science;-the qualification of lecturers, who are an active part of the participants in conferences organized in digital form, will be increased.The achieved results of the project will have an impact mainly on the quality of higher education and communication of scientific knowledge. In the emergency of pandemics such as those caused by COVID-19 or other global crises, academics will have a much calmer acceptance of the need to transfer academic life to a remote environment. The achieved goal - created conditions for organizing and conducting quality educational and scientific conferences will affect different levels of functioning of higher education systems, and in the first place the impact will affect the project participants, institutions, higher education systems and maintenance of the quality of HE."

The main goal of AIDA4Edge is to strengthen networking between the Coordinator (FEEUNI) and the advanced partners (IHP, UoM and UNIFE) from European institutions in order to enable FEEUNI to reach scientific and innovation excellence in the field of Edge AI (Artificial Intelligence). Fundamental and thriving research will tackle the issue of bringing complex AI algorithms to Edge devices with resource constrains in terms of memory, processing power, energy consumption and latency. To meet this challenge, the synergy of expertise of all partners will be exploited and an adaptive AI-enabled edge computing pipeline will be developed. UNIFE will contribute with the expertise in the field of optimization and tuning hyperparameters of ANN (Artificial Neural Network) utilizing probabilistic logic. IHP will be in charge of exploiting the advantages brought by multi-core AI accelerators in terms of power consumption and reliability. UoM will leverage the synergies between bio-inspired SNNs (Spiking Neural Networks) and ANNs, to maintain the accuracy of conventional ANNs and to exploit the input data sparsity through the asynchronous computational capabilities of bio-inspired SNNs. FEEUNI will bring the expertise in quantization, important for ANN compression and resource saving. By the knowledge transfer and the exchange of the best practice, networking will provide FEEUNI all knowledge it lacks. It will enable FEEUNI not only to empower research capacity, but also to become the center of excellence in the field of Edge AI and to raise the reputation and enhance research management capacities and administrative skills. This will strengthen and encourage FEEUNI team (with a lot of women involved) to apply to variety of new research calls and to boost progress in science and economy in Serbia and beyond, reducing the imbalance of research capabilities between developed European countries and Serbia.

The project aims to strengthen significantly the research capacity and scientific excellence at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ni (FEUN) by enhancing networking activities with Poliedra - Polytechnic University of Milan (POLIEDRA) and Oslo Metropolitan University (OSLOMET) in the field of smart and resilient urban and regional development using state-of-the-art data analytics and optimization tools in a data-rich environment. This is to be achieved through the following objectives: - Enhancing the scientific capacity of FEUN by establishing a Laboratory of Land Economy and Urban Analytics (LEUA) at FEUN where the researchers from POLIEDRA and OSLOMET will perform training activities, transfer knowledge and best practices, conduct workshops and seminars aimed to include early-stage researchers and FEUN staff; - Raising the research profile of FEUN staff through strengthening research experience and collaborative research and joint papers with researchers from leading European universities - Creating a long-term scientific strategy of FEUN for stepping up and stimulating scientific excellence in the field of smart and resilient urban development analysis using contemporary quantitative tools of data analytics - Enhancing career prospects for early-stage researchers, through short-term exchanges, workshops, seminars and summer schools, with renowned researchers in the field -Strengthening administrative and project management skills of staff at FEUN, by establishing Project Management unit to deal exclusively with the preparation of project proposals, administration and financial management of projects. The project addresses the specific challenge of enhancing networking activities between a research institution from the widening country and two internationally leading European counterparts. By strengthening the research management and administrative skills of the coordination institution from the WB country, the project will help raise its research profile.