In the MENA region the unemployment rate among HE graduates is among the highest in the world as a direct result of the mismatch between education outcomes and expectations of the labor market. With the fast evolving pattern of the market-needs as a result of revolutionary technologies such as Industry 4.0, AI, robotics and machine learning, a new shift in human resource requirements map is at hand leaving HEIs with an inevitable time-pressing challenge to adjust the learning processes to yield particular competencies that expand way beyond the technical knowledge that has been the focus for many decades. It is thus the aim of this project is to develop a generation of globally-exposed HE graduates, equipped with essential character, social and cognitive skills blended with academic competencies, with a higher degree of readiness for the fast-evolving community and job market, and who are capable to integrate effectively in multi-cultural, diverse eco-system. Hence, Competence-tailored Student Journey Map that blends academic and academic-complimentary competencies during the student lifetime is introduced. A pilot set of competence-tailored 35 short- and 10 long-term extracurricular activities & “quests” are designed and programmed into the LMS & SIS of partner HEIs, along with 35 courses (120 ECTS) in Engineering and ICT restructured to align with SDGs in competency-based format, targeting the full envisioned picture of the future “Global Citizen” possessing competencies that were clearly identified via an exhaustive gap analysis developed at the beginning of the project. A target of at least 60 students at each of the 7 partner HEIs in Egypt, Jordan and Algeria is planned. Student-Stakeholders Engagement Portal, where employers and students share their profiles and where both have open arena to engage in internships, summer jobs, capacity building programs is essential in the proposed integrative (academic/extracurricular/industry engagement) approach.

CLEVER proposes a series of innovations in the area of hardware accelerators, design stack, and middleware software that revolutionize the ability of edge computing platforms to operate federatedly, leveraging sparse resources that are coordinated to create a powerful swarm of resources. CLEVER technologies will support the deep edge computing paradigm, moving computing services closer to the end user or the source of the data to reduce power consumption, reduce capacity requirements, and latency for mission critical applications. Furthermore, CLEVER will overcome traditional limitations of edge computing in terms of limited resource availability by providing an effective framework for seamless use of federated resources in the edge-cloud continuum. CLEVER will demonstrate processing solutions for AI at the edge through four use cases: (1) digital twin for in-factory optimization, (2) smart agriculture for high yield eco-farms, (3) fully automated material deployment, and (4) augmented reality for shopping sites. Through the achievement of its goals, the CLEVER project will help to position Europe at the forefront of the intelligent edge computing field, enabling growth across many sectors (manufacturing, agriculture, smart environments, augmented reality, and others). By lowering the barriers for utilising edge computing for artificial intelligence applications, CLEVER will open the door for European Industries and SMEs to leverage state of the art technologies, driving their development and growth as leaders in their sectors.

For the purpose of creating digitalisation and automation solutions Arrowhead Tools adresses engineering methodologies and suitable integrated tool chains. With the global aim of substantial reduction of the engineering costs for digitalisation/automation solutions. Thus the Arrowhead Tools vision is: - Engineering processes and tool chains for cost efficient developments of digitalization, connectivity and automation systems solutions in various fields of application For the further and wider commercialisation of automation and digitalisation services and products based on SOA, Arrowhead Framework and similar technologies there is a clear need for engineerings tools that integrates existing automation and digitalisation engineering procedures and tool with SOA based automation/digitalisation technology. For this purpose the Arrowhead Tool’s grand challenges are defined as: - Engineering costs reduction by 40-60% for a wide range of automation/digitalisation solutions. - Tools chains for digitalisation and automation engineering and management, adapted to: 1. existing automation and digitalisation engineering methodologies and tools 2. new IoT and SoS automation and digitalisation engineering and management tools 3. security management tools - Training material and kits for professional engineers The results will create impact on: - Automation and digitalisation solution market - Automation and engineering efficiency and the SSBS market - Automation and digitalisation security - Competence development on engineering of automation and digitalisation solution