Against the background of increasing quantities of waste from electrical & electronic equipment (e-waste), lacking recycling infrastructure for adequate treatment and lacking know how in this field, the project LaWEEda aims at strengthening Universities in Brazil and Nicaragua in their education in the field of e-waste management and entrepreneurship and collaboration with businesses. The LaWEEda consortium consists of 3 European universities, 4 Universities and 4 business partners in the target region.The project aims at improving the dialogue between research and practice by establishing regional Collaboration & Training Centres serving as knowledge hubs and interface, thus enhancing the quality of educational products. Further this improves the employability of graduates at University level and of practicioners at CPD-level and supports sustainable entrepreneurship. Developing and implementing new and innovative educational products along with the establishment of two Collaboration & Training Centres (one in Brazil and Nicaragua each) will lead to the following results:• Qualified graduates from Universities in e-waste management• Provision of trained and skilled workers as well as persons with entrepreneurial spirit and skills to start own businesses• Increasing employability of graduates and practitioners, inclusion of informal recyclers as socially deprived parts of society, improving social cohesion• Equipping education and training providers with modern teaching tools and approaches An improved information basis on available and lacking education will be created, the Collaboration & Trainings Centres developed, new and innovative educational products for academic use and for CPD evolved.For the LaWEEda Centres business plans were developed in order to ensure sustainability. Through the course of the project a wider network of stakeholders in e-waste management was established, aiming at a scaling up of the activities to other parts of Latin America.

High-Performance Computing (HPC), used to be promoted mainly by the big science and defence communities. However, with the recent advent of AI and IoT, wider use of HPC is bringing new benefits to areas such as industry, healthcare and the economy. All regions now see intense investments in HPC as an essential in order to compete globally. In this context, coordination and capacity sharing between allied regions is crucial. The RISC2 project will gather eight key European HPC actors, and the main HPC actors from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile, to encourage stronger cooperation between their research and industrial communities on HPC applications and infrastructure deployment. The project will be advised by an external Board made up of distinguished experts from Latin America and Europe. RISC2 will promote exchange of best practice through meetings, workshops and training, organised to coincide with major HPC events in Europe (like ISC and EuroHPCSW) and in Latin America (like CARLA and ISUM). RISC2 will build on the already strong relationships of the consortium partners; on the results of the previous RISC project, and on the use of platforms like the Ellalink Subsea Cable https://ella.link/. The main project deliverable will be a cooperation roadmap aimed at policymakers, the scientific community and industry, identifying key application areas, HPC infrastructure and policy requirements, and exploring ways for the activities established during the project to last beyond its lifetime. RISC2’s activities and results will be disseminated widely through dedicated project communication tools and will take advantage of existing platforms such as Campus Iberoamerica. The training carried out in the project will help capacitate Latin American HPC, and the structured interaction between researchers and policymakers in both regions will reinforce links and help define a coordinated policy and a clear roadmap for the future.

SILVANUS envisages to deliver an environmentally sustainable and climate resilient forest management platform through innovative capabilities to prevent and combat against the ignition and spread of forest fires. The platform will cater to the demands of efficient resource utilisation and provide protection against threats of wildfires encountered globally. The project will establish synergies between (i) environmental; (ii) technology and (iii) social science experts for enhancing the ability of regional and national authorities to monitor forest resources, evaluate biodiversity, generate more accurate fire risk indicators and promote safety regulations among citizens through awareness campaigns. The novelty of SILVANUS lies in the development and integration of advanced semantic technologies to systematically formalise the knowledge of forest administration and resource utilisation. Additionally, the platform will integrate a big-data processing framework capable of analysing heterogeneous data sources including earth observation resources, climate models and weather data, continuous on-board computation of multi-spectral video streams. Also, the project integrates a series of sensor and actuator technologies using innovative wireless communication infrastructure through the coordination of aerial vehicles and ground robots. The technological platform will be complemented with the integration of resilience models, and the results of environmental and ecological studies carried out for the assessment of fire risk indicators based on continuous surveys of forest regions. The surveys are designed to take into consideration the expertise and experience of frontline fire fighter organisations who collectively provide support for 47,504x104 sq. meters of forest area within Europe and across international communities. The project innovation will be validated through 11 pilot demonstrations across Europe and internationally using a two sprint cycle.