SOLAR-ICT foresees to organize 6 workshops in Latin America. The locations are: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay. The Project partners have decided to run these activities in two rounds: the first one around April while the second round is foreseen to be organized in June.

Workshops will be structured over two days and they will provide specific information and training on:

• the research funding programmes of the EC,
• related national and European programmes,
• ongoing projects and success stories,
• Guidance on FP7 and on the thematic programme in ICT.

Therefore more concrete discussions on potential collaboration and future R&D projects will be organized and will request the active participation of those organisations that have expressed a real interest to participate in future projects and collaborate with European counterparts. Experts and trainers in the sector will provide guidance, supervision and feedback in order to ensure that by the end of the two day mentoring workshops, each cluster session would have the following elements:

• Detailed project ideas articulated in the format of a research project proposal;
• Roles of the partners within a potential consortium defined;
• Roles and requirements for the search of other potential partners needed.

In the last months of 2007, WINDS LA has organised three Research Collaboration Conferences:
- in October, the WINDS@Rio Conference was organised in the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Rio De Janeiro, gathering more than 70 researchers, policy makers and representatives of ICT research users; during the event some excellence EU-Brazil projects were presented to key national policy makers and networks, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Research Foundation and the Brazilian Computer Society.
- in November, the WINDS@Buenos Aires took place in the Subsecretaria de Gestion Publica, in collaboration with the National Secretariat for Science and Technology and with a number of key national partners, such as USUARIA, Transistemas, the national Software Association, the ABEST Office for S&T collaboration between the EU and Argentina. More than 120 participants attended the event, discussing how to successfully participate in FP7, how to improve cooperation in ICT research between the public and the private sector, and how to design a national Digital Agenda.
- in December, the WINDS@Mexico Conference was organised in the campus Norte de Estado de Mexico del ITESM de Monterrey, gathering more than 100 top national researchers, who have presented and discussed successful EU-Mexico collaboration projects in the field of ICT. The event included a session aimed at building a stronger national community on ICT research, organised in collaboration with the Foro Consultivo sobre Ciencia y Tecnologia.

All these evens mobilized a lot of energy in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and represented important gathering moments. All the presentations and the lists of participants are available in the “Events” section of the www.winds-la.eu website. If you have not been able o participate in person but you are interested in getting to know the last cooperation possibilities and to promoter your expertise, just contact communication@winds-la.eu.


To follow up the events organised in 2007 and to support collaboration on a number of specific topics, in March 2008 the WINDS-LA project will be opening 6 specific cooperation spaces on the following themes:

• ICT for social inclusion, accessibility, connectivity
• ICT for environment and biodiversity
• ICT and energy
• eHealth
• Digital libraries and learning networks
• Software engineering

More than 600 European and Latin American researchers have joined the www.winds-la.eu platform: don’t miss the opportunity to take part in the online collaborative work!!

More information >> www.winds-la.eu

The Seventh Framework Programme   (FP7)

The Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7), the main European Union’s instrument for funding research in the region, has launched the ICT Call 3 on Cooperation with an indicative budget of  265 Millions €. Companies, universities, research centers and other organisations from all Latin-American countries may participate in a collaborative project provided that the minimum conditions laid down in the  Rules for Participation are met.

The open priorities of Call 3 are:

The Information Package provides the necessary specifications to submit a proposal. The legal text of the call defines the research theme, funding instruments used, address and other technical means for submission, deadlines etc.
Deadline: 8 April 2008.

In the www.winds-la.eu website you can find guidance on how to find European partners, how to present a project idea, how to promote your institution towards potential European coordinators, etc.

Latin American Highlights on ICT Challenges 2 and 4 

Challenge 2 – Cognitive systems, interaction and robotics: Robotics has not yet had a huge boom in Latin America, but the SOLAR-ICT Mapping in target countries of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, has show that robotics is a very important and strong potential area of growth within the ICT sector.  Within all 6 countries, there are total of at least 20 organisations that have reported excellent applied capabilities in the field of robotics and cognitive systems; even more organizations who reported they have at least good capabilities in this field.
In Costa Rica for example, beginning since 1998, projects have been implemented to create Labs for Robotics Exploration in primary and high schools to inspire students from a young age to discover robotics. The success of this experience is reflected in the results of the Costa Rica Mapping.

Challenge 4 – Digital libraries and content: Through the SOLAR-ICT mapping, it was discovered that organizations in each country rated themselves with fairly high capabilities in this field. Countries like Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay were countries with the highest ratings with at least 45% of mapped organizations reporting medium to excellent capability in digital libraries research. Although there aren’t many current research projects, every day more concepts are being developed and are contributing by creating an interest in producers/developers to offer the countries optional systems to unfold in areas of personalization, semantics, or diverse software to automate administrative systems.  Between all 6 countries, there exist over 30 organisations who have rated their capability in digital libraries research as excellent.
For example, to highlight in Ecuador, where 55% of mapped organizations rated highly capable in the field of digital libraries and content, it is expected that this trend can reach up to 90 – 95% in the next couple of years. Planning, improvement and creation of interactive areas of knowledge transfer are key elements for society and government priorities; fully equipped documentary centers with remote access or online access, interactive museums, virtual libraries for books and papers for research; and also as an international method for country promotion.

Please consult the SOLAR-ICT mapping database at www.solar-ict.eu, to search for a Latin American partner with excellent research capabilities in these above ICT fields.