The DIGIS3 consortium will receive a funding of €1,065,361.45 to incorporate new companies and strengthen its visibility. The Council of Ministers has approved a Royal Decree, published this week in the BOE, which regulates the direct award of grants to 12 Digital Innovation Hubs within the Support Program for Digital Innovation Hubs (PADIH) financed by the Next Generation funds under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The total amount of the grants amounts to 15 million euros.

The objective of the program is to create a network of European Digital Innovation Hubs in Spain to provide SMEs with the advanced digitization tools needed to meet the challenges arising from the digital transition. These programs will contribute to the digitization of our SMEs, improving their competitiveness and contributing to the generation of employment, especially among young people and women.

About Digital Innovation Hubs

Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) are conceived as “one-stop shops” through which to offer the information, services and experimentation facilities that companies need to successfully address their digital transformation processes.

The Digital Innovation Hubs Support Program (PADIH), promoted by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, is endowed with 37.59 million euros and is proposed within the framework of the Digital Europe Program, which provides for the creation of an initial network of European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIH) during its first year of operation.

The grant will be used to finance actions aimed at:

  • Facilitate collaboration, information exchange and the provision of specialized and customized business support services.
  •  Increase the participation of new companies or organizations in the EDIH and strengthen their visibility.
  • Management of EDIH facilities, organization of training programs, workshops and conferences to promote knowledge sharing and networking, as well as transnational cooperation.

List of beneficiaries and maximum funding

About DIGIS3

The overall objective of DIGIS3 is to ensure the intelligent, sustainable and cohesive digital transformation of SMEs and Public Administration entities in the region; with an urban and rural territorial scope focused on cohesion, through comprehensive support to users, facilitating their access to specialized technical knowledge and experimentation environments, in a one-stop shop service whose central core of knowledge and training is structured around Artificial Intelligence and Supercomputing, bearing in mind cybersecurity as a necessary layer in any digitization process.

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.