Last week the kick-off meeting of the GILL (Gendered Innovation Living Labs) project was held in Brussels. Juan Manuel Corchado and Marta Plaza represented AIR Institute and the BISITE Research Group respectively, in this productive and educational event that was attended by all the project partners and some representatives of the European Commission.

Based on the Living Lab principles, GILL aims to become the open innovation framework for all European actors working with a gender perspective. One of the main objectives and where our AIR Institute will actively participate, is to broaden the community of innovation from a gender perspective, facilitating the capitalization of experience, peer-to-peer learning and the creation of communities to promote women innovators.

With this project, and the initiatives we are advancing through the AIR Institute and BISITE Research Group, we hope to achieve a significant increase in vocation and, at the same time, develop strategies and mechanisms to attract more women to projects related to technological developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) in particular.

We are very pleased to be part of this ambitious project, which aims to create a fairer Open Innovation Ecosystem to foster the effective participation, innovation and thought leadership of women and other traditionally underrepresented groups.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 101094812.

The information and views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.