CELTIC-NEXT Awards 2020 presented at virtual award session
This year, the CELTIC awards for excellence and innovation were for the first time presented in a virtual session. The awards session on 2nd December 2020 was part of the CELTIC-NEXT Day, which included also a keynote on sustainable ICT systems, and sessions for project proposers.
Around 60 participants witnessed the presentation of the awards to four CELTIC projects, three excellence awards and one innovation award. Moderator Milon Gupta from the CELTIC Office at Eurescom opened the awards session by saying that the CELTIC Awards are more important than the Oscar film awards, because the winning CELTIC projects will have a more profound impact on improving our lives than some entertaining movies.
The winners were selected by the jury based on quality and impact. For the innovation award, the business impact had a significantly higher weight than for the excellence awards.
The winners in the different categories are:
CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award 2020 / Category: Applications
Winner: ReICOvAir – Reliable Industrial Communication Over the Air
ReICOvAir aimed to enable the widespread usage of wireless communication systems in industrial environments. This is done by creating an open, standardized verification method as well as initial testing systems relying on this method in order to qualify the reliability of wireless communication.
ReICOvAir contributed with highly skilled experts to the first steps to enable the widespread usage of wireless communication systems in industrial environments. To be highlighted are the innovative verification methods as well as initial testing systems relying on this method in order to qualify the reliability of various wireless communication systems. The impact of the project in industrial communications has been documented in various publications, some of them won best paper awards. In addition ReICOvAir contributed to national standardization bodies (VDI, DKE) and international standardization bodies (5G-ACIA, IEC, 3GPP).
Further information: https://www.celticnext.eu/project-reicovair/
CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award 2020 / Category: Multimedia
Winner: MONALIS – Monitoring and control of QoE in large scale media distribution architectures
The MONALIS project developed monitoring techniques and tools for large scale media distribution. It used Big Data analytics for Quality of Experience evaluation and analysis relevant for overall customer satisfaction.
The MONALIS project has very high business potential due to the growing importance of multimedia using mobile devices and the 5G focus on quality of experience.
The work has a great impact for service providers, operators, and content providers, with prototypes very close to commercialisation. The added value of the work is proved by significant standards contributions, including 6 contributions to TMForum and VQEG, and high impact publications.
Further information: https://www.celticnext.eu/project-monalis/
CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award 2020 / Category: Network and Security
Winner: SENDATE – SEcure Networking for a DATa center cloud in Europe
The 70 million euro CELTIC flagship project SENDATE developed solutions for more secure data centres in Europe. The main goal of SENDATE was to make data centers more secure through a new network topology based on geographically distributed and securely connected data centers.
The projects achieved very significant results in the field of Secure Networking for a Data Centre cloud in Europe. Edge Computing shifts high traffic loads away from Core DC an essential condition to allow low latency applications link in autonomous driving. Thanks to the project European companies are back in the business of data centres. The project achieved two world records: the world’s first 100G quantum safe transport over 2,800 km and the world’s first 400G link with single-photodiode for DC Interconnect.
Further information: https://www.celticnext.eu/project-sendate/
CELTIC-NEXT Innovation Award 2020
Winner: E3 – E-health services Everywhere and for Everybody
E3 designed an end-to-end platform which allows anybody to access e-health services from anywhere via low-cost high-quality video conferencing and e-health services.
The E3 projects realized an impressing impact. E3 was one of the few SME led CELTIC projects and it generated as many as 3 new start-up companies that are commercializing the projects results. 107 new employees have been hired. It also generated 12 new products and 14 products that have been improved.
Further information: https://www.celticnext.eu/project-e3/
In short interviews, the coordinators of the winning projects explained the relevance and business impacts of their key project results. The winning project representatives were:
- ReICOvAir – Frank Burkhardt, Group Manager Industrial Communications at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits;
- MONALIS – Antonio Cuadra Sanchez, Senior Consultant and Research Manager at Indra Minsait;
- SENDATE – Jari Lehmusvuori, Head of Department at Nokia Bell Labs, Vice-chair Of Celtic Core Group (he replaced coordinator Marco Hoffmann from Nokia Bell Labs, who could not attend);
- E3 – Oscar Chabrera, Co-Founder & EU Manager of ViLynx as well as Co-Founder, CFO & CRO of Clevernet.
Although the applause was this time only virtual, via the web meeting chat, the technological and economic impacts of the award-winning projects will last far beyond 2020.
