In today's fast-paced global landscape, innovation is the catalyst for progress. The 'Next Gen Innovation Talent' initiative is dedicated to fostering a cohort of skilled, entrepreneurial thinkers who can translate ideas into tangible, market-ready solutions. Our mission is clear: to nurture an entrepreneurial mindset among researchers and emerging innovators. We view innovation as more than just generating ideas; it's a rigorous process of turning those ideas into practical, market-ready solutions. To achieve this, we've designed a comprehensive two-year program based on a robust and flexible methodology that leverages cutting-edge AI instruments to support the program. It begins with discovering talents and a detailed needs assessment for each participant, providing valuable insights into their unique aspirations. We then facilitate connections between researchers and the corporate world using an intelligent matching procedure, creating an environment encouraging collaboration and creativity. Participants in our program are not ordinary interns; they are the future architects of innovation and problem-solving from the most relevant European research programs (e.g. ERC and EIC). We provide robust support through mentorship, resources, and tailored opportunities, empowering them to envision ambitious goals and overcome obstacles in pursuing transformative solutions. We aim to quantify our impact through a target of no less than 600 internships, each representing a distinct personal and professional growth journey. Our ultimate aspiration is to witness the birth of groundbreaking inventions, the rise of visionary leaders, and the establishment of a culture where innovation and society thrive.

GNSS will become the primary means of navigation in the mid and long term. However, GNSS signals are vulnerable to threats, specially to jamming and spoofing, which may cause the total loss of navigation, and hence the management of those threaths is a safety must. This project will research multiple measures that could be deployed on most aircrafts to enable the management of those threats, either on their own or in a collaborative fashion with other aircrafts. The measures to be researched will cover the threats detection, localisation and mitigation, the latter either to keep the GNSS-based navigation operative or to revert to an alternate PNT technology based on 5G cellular stations networks.

MISTRAL will elaborate the Technical Specification of the future communication system for all railways in light of the migration from the current obsolete GSM-R.The new radio system will leverage the broadband capacity of IP-based wireless communication to enhance signaling but also to make possible innovative services for both users and train automation/control.To achieve the objective, MISTRAL will generate firstly a portfolio of foreseeable future communication scenarios. Then, a Techno-Economic Proposition consistent with future scenarios will be defined, including a portfolio of innovative services ushered-in by new technologies and compliant with new users requirements as well as with safety, security and QoS requirements. Such Techno-Economic proposition will be subject to a Business Viability Analysis - meant to gauge and optimize the total-cost-of-ownership of the new communication system - and to a Technical Viability Analysis that will investigate the compliance with the new requirements. Subsequently, the results of such Business and Technical Viability Analysis will be used as basis to refine and finalize the Validated Techno-Economic proposition, which will thus rely on an optimized life-cycle cost and on a sound portfolio of innovative services. The Validated Techno-Economic proposition will be the main output of MISTRAL, i.e. the 'Technical Specification' scope of the topic. Its design and validation will be supported by an External Stakeholder Committee, involving selected key players in the Railway domain, external to the MISTRAL Consortium. In addition, MISTRAL will disseminate project findings to relevant stakeholders and communities and will ensure the sustainability and impact of the new specified communication system, In terms of far-reaching impact, MISTRAL will lay the foundations for the next-generation train-to-wayside communication systems, paving the way for a more competitive, attractive and sustainable European railway ecosystem.

The study of critical dependancies upon GNSS-derived time and position identifies telecomunications, emergency services, energy, finance, food and transport as the sectors where GNSS plays a key role. GNSS is used as a timing source for the synchronization of various types of network and has been recently dened as the backbone of the connected world and also the invisible utility. Some of these networks are classied as critical infrastructures and, together with other service infrastructures, pose security-related requirements on top of timing accuracy requirements. ROOT (Rolling Out OSNMA for the secure synchronization of Telecom networks) project will assess the benefits introduced by the Galileo OSNMA signal in the specific context of telecommunication network synchronization applications. It will estimate the increased resiliance brough by OSNMA to GNSS-based timing sources. ROOT will consider the requirements, such as accuracy, tollerance to timing outages, etc., posed by the 5G playground to guarantee the expected perfomance. ROOT will follow an experimental approach to demonstrate and measure the increased level of robusteness provided by new multi-frequency, OSNMA-ready Galileo receivers, when they slave multiple timing sources across the network. This will be combined to secure network synchronization distribution by means of Precision Time Protocol and its White Rabbit flavour; specific network-related Key Performance Indicators will be measured. ROOT will foster the adoption of Galileo signals featuring authentication mechanisms in terrestrial infrastructures dependant upon satellite-derived time. ROOT partners cover the whole value chain for critical infrastructures: from research to manufacturers of GNSS and timing components, from networks operators to experts in market strategies, the partners complement each other in terms of knowledge and competences. They collectively constitute a consortium capable of fulfilling the project objectives.

The ASTRail project falls within the scope of the topic S2R-OC-IP2-01-2017 – Operational conditions of the signalling and automation systems; signalling system hazard analysis and GNSS SIS characterization along with Formal Method application in railway field, which is connected with the complementary topics S2R-CFM-IP2-01-2015 and S2R-CFM-IP2-01-2017. The ASTRail project will act to enhance the signalling and automation system by searching innovative solutions that exploit cutting edge technologies already present in sectors different from the rail such as the avionics or the automotive sector. Investigation of such technologies and assessment of their reusability in the railway field will be done taking in particular care all issues related to safety and performance in the rail system. Some ASTRail Partners have already participated in S2R projects, while others have been specifically involved to cope with some vertical tasks. From a different point of view, the Consortium is well balanced with both research organizations and industrial stakeholders of the rail domain.