The partners of the DIGIS3 consortium met on February 21 in Salamanca to hold the kick-off meeting of the project, which serves as a prelude to the official presentation event, which will take place in March.

The meeting was attended by representatives of all DIGIS3 partners: the Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE), AIR Institute, DIHBU, DIH-LEAF, the Castile and Leon Supercomputing Center Foundation (SCAYLE) and the University of León. Each of them presented their work package to establish how to proceed over the next six months, with the overall goal in mind: to ensure the smart, sustainable and cohesive digital transformation of SMEs and government entities in the region.

Thanks to the contributions of each of the members, a roadmap for progress in the coming months has been established, clarifying the roles of each partner through the four basic pillars on which the actions of the consortium, configured as a Digital Innovation Hub, are based: sustainability and demographic challenge, talent, communication and cooperation.

Boosting digital transformation through Digital Innovation Hubs

A Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) is a group of entities that allows companies and public administration within a given area to access the information, services and facilities they need to address their digital transformation processes.

Digital Innovation Hubs are one of the main tools of the European Commission to achieve the objectives set in the Digitalization Strategy.

The overall objective of DIGIS3 is to ensure a smart, sustainable and cohesive digital transformation of SMEs and structural units of the state administration in the region; with a territorial scope in urban and rural areas focused on cohesion, giving comprehensive support to users that facilitates their access to specialized technical knowledge and an experimentation environment, in a one-stop shop with a central core of knowledge and training structured around artificial intelligence and supercomputing, cybersecurity is considered a necessary layer in any digitization process. This incorporation will be done using appropriate digitization paths, according to the digital maturity level of the users and also taking into account the specific needs of the industry and the geographical environment.

DIGIS3 is specialized in:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • High Performance Computing (HPC)
  • Industry 4.0
  • Demographic Challenge
  • Smart Renewables
  • Smart Agriculture
  • Circular Economy
  • Smart Cities and Territories
  • E-Government and Data Spaces

DIGIS3 has a wide range of infrastructures that it makes available to companies and the Public Administration to develop the services provided by the project, such as training, testing and experimentation and advice on digitization, to facilitate access to specialized know-how and experimentation environments.

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.