The general objective of GATE is to establish Centre of Excellence on “Big Data for Smart Society – GATE” that will fulfill the vision of Open Innovation through building a sustainable University-Government-Industry-Society ecosystem. The CoE will be established as joint initiative between Sofia University – the most prestigious educational and scientific hub in Bulgaria and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden – leading European institution with extensive experience in research, education and innovation. CoE main research objective is to advance the state-of-the-art in the whole Big Data Value Chain, including development of advanced methods and tools for data collection from variety of structured and unstructured sources, data consistency checking and cleaning, data aggregation and linking, data processing, modeling and analysis, data delivery by providing both accessibility and proper visualization. Following challenges of the Programme Horizon 2020 and the Bulgarian Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization 2014-2020, the project team selected the most promising Data Driven Innovation Pillars: Data Driven Government (Public Services based on Open Data); Data Driven Industry (Manufacturing and Production); Data Driven Society (Smart Cities); and Data Driven Science. The specific objectives of Teaming 1 phase are to establish a solid background for the creation and sustainability of a CoE at a national, regional and EU level through (1) Elaboration of a detailed and robust business plan with a long term vision for setting-up and sustaining of the CoE; (2) Strengthening the research capacity and potential in Big Data; (3) Establishment of an international collaborative network of Big Data and related fields researchers; (4) Increasing quality of education and training and offering measures for motivation and involvement of the next-generation Early-Stage Researchers; and (5) Wide dissemination and promotion of project aims, activities and expected outputs.

GATE aims to establish a “BiG DAta for SmarT SociEty” Center of Excellence in Bulgaria, in order to provide focus for increased scientific excellence and sustained Big Data growth, through attractive and stimulating research environment, advanced infrastructure supporting open innovation and vibrant ecosystem to enable responsive research and innovation. GATE Center of Excellence will be fully autonomous and purpose-built institute, established as a joint initiative between Sofia University - the most prestigious educational and scientific hub in Bulgaria, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden - outstanding European institution with extensive experience in research, education and innovation in Big Data area and Foundation Chalmers Industrial Technology, Sweden – a leader in innovation management, university-industry collaboration and technology transfer. GATE is a timely initiative that is fully exploiting the opportunities created by the innovation ecosystem boost and the Big Data market pull in Bulgaria, the Artificial Intelligence technological push in Sweden and the EU and global research and development urge for Big Data. The CoE will deliver economic and societal benefits through training data professionals and fostering closer collaboration between academia, government and industry, thus helping Bulgarian organisations and industry in various sectors to become, and remain, competitive. Being the only Big Data CoE to be established in Eastern Europe, GATE will bridge the gap between the 55 centres in Western Europe and Eastern Europe and will play a strategic role for disseminating the best practices and innovative models to the widening countries.

The Graphene Flagship (GF) initiative aims at advancing Europe’s strategic autonomy in technologies that rely on graphene and other 2D materials and sustaining the first-mover advantage that Europe has obtained through earlier investments. This overarching goal will be pursued by a number of graphene and 2D materials (2DM) related actions – Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) and Innovation Actions (IAs) – in collaboration with activities funded by the EU member states and associated countries. The overall coherence of the GF initiative is guaranteed by a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) that allows the separate actions to exploit synergies in their scientific and technological activities and work more efficiently by utilising common services and support functions. GrapheneEU builds upon the extensive experience and expertise of a consortium that has been responsible for the central support and coordination functions of the Graphene Flagship during the FP7 and Horizon 2020 phases and therefore has access to the broad network of researchers and organisations which will participate in the GF initiative. GrapheneEU will ensure a strong and coherent initiative by providing key support functions in coordination and governance, industrialisation, dissemination, and alignment, enabling the participating projects to identify and utilise synergies in their work, share best practices, and promote interactions with relevant national and regional initiatives. GrapheneEU will help secure a sustained European leadership in 2DM by capitalising on the investments in the Graphene Flagship from the FP7 and Horizon 2020 phases and fostering and facilitating the work to be continued during Horizon Europe.

In modern society, as the use of information technology is rapidly increasing, it is necessary to develop new non-volatile, faster, and energy-efficient electronics. Spintronic technologies open promising routes to achieve this. However, devices based on conventional materials are still too inefficient for applications in consumer electronics. Here, we propose to develop a new energy-efficient spintronic memory device platform based on emerging atomically-thin two-dimensional (2D) quantum materials for the next generation of memory technologies. The 2D topological spin-orbit materials can generate a giant current-induced spin polarization, whereas room temperature 2D magnets provide the prospective of electric control of magnetism. The proposed van der Waals heterostructure spintronic devices consisting of 2D topological spin-orbit materials and 2D magnets will enable exceptionally efficient spin-orbit torque (SOT) functionality with low current densities and ultrafast magnetization switching speed. All-2D multifunctional SOT will provide a strong synergy between spintronics and 2D material and take this research from TRL2 to 4. We will employ novel methods to control their SOT properties – by the twist angle between the layers, topological aspects, crystal symmetries, proximity interaction, and strong electric field effects. To achieve this challenging goal, this project brings together pioneering and world-leading experimental and theoretical researchers and a company in the field of spintronics and 2D materials in Europe. The ultimate demonstration of all-2D SOT device units will merge the field of spintronics and twistronics, allowing for physical and electrical tuning parameters to achieve enhanced control over the device functionalities. These developments will enable groundbreaking 2D SOT technologies for low-power, non-volatile, ultrafast, and scalable data storage and processing devices and possibly new spin-based computing paradigms and architectures.