AMBASSADOR WP leaders met recently in Nice, France when participating in the ICT for sustainable places conference (9 – 12 September 2013) organised by the RESILIENT project. During this four day event aiming at fostering collaborations between FP7 projects involved at the crossroads of ICT, energy and construction, addressing sustainability and energy efficiency at building, district, and city levels, AMBASSADOR team took part in several activities organised in its scope.

During the main conference programme, AMBASSADOR contribution on ontology was presented in one of the Technical focus session. The presentation was led by Miguel Oltra from Schneider Electric – Telvent and Jorge Berzosa from Tekniker. It was especially dedicated to the explanation of the design decisions made and problems solved in the first phases of the project.

AMBASSADOR team also met with colleagues from the RESILIENT project during a joint workshop. The main goal of the meeting was to discuss and understand the positioning of the two projects towards each other (since they have been both funded from the same call topic), to identify common actions and share ideas on possible cooperation. Key common areas of interest were identified, action list proposed and further cooperation between the projects had been foreseen.

At the final day of the conference, AMBASSADOR project was also presented in a round table organised by the ODYSSEUS project. The objective of the round table was to share projects visions (with other projects like IDEAS, EEPOS or INTREPID) on the ICT solutions, since it was important to mutualize the approaches and lesson learned in the different projects and share a common understanding on the energy efficiency neighborhood topics from a technological point of view.

After a successful first edition in 2011, the European Commission has launched the second edition of the EU Prize for Women Innovators to reward three women who have developed outstanding innovations and brought them to market. The contest is open until 15 October 2013 to all women who have founded or co-founded their own company and who have at some point in their career benefited from the EU’s research framework programmes or the Competitiveness and Innovation framework programme.

The first prize is EUR 100,000, second prize EUR 50,000 and the third prize EUR 25,000. With this Prize, the European Commission aims to raise awareness about the contribution, potential and importance of Women researchers to entrepreneurship and to encourage women to exploit the commercial and business opportunities offered by their research projects and become entrepreneurs.

More information are available on www.ec.europa.eu/women-innovators

AMBASSADOR partners met at the end of May in Lavrion, Greece at M6 Project Steering Committee meeting. The programme offered following items:

• External Advisory Board meeting
• Project Steering Committee meeting
• WP3 and WP4 workshops
• Lavrion test site visit

Outputs of 22 – 24 May 2013 meeting are accessible for AMBASSADOR partners inside the Partners’ area.

On April 23 2013 the “Energy Efficient Buildings event” was hosted by MEP Maria da Graça Carvalho, Member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), together with the Energy Efficiency Buildings Association (E2BA) at the European Parliament in Brussels. This event brought together three Directorates-General of the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, DG Connect and DG Energy as well as representatives of large industry, SMEs, academia, research centers and regions and a vast range of stakeholders in the construction sector.

At this event the new EeB Research and Innovation Roadmap “Towards the creation of a high-tech building industry. Turning energy efficiency into a sustainable business”, setting up the priorities in the built environment for the period 2014-2020. Draft version of this report as well as other outputs from the event are available here.

In March 2013, AMBASSADOR team was actively participating in the 3^rd Workshop on the Impact of EeB PPP that was jointly organised by the European Commission with the support of the Energy Efficient Building Association. The objectives of the Workshop were to address innovation and exploitation issues in running projects and explore potential for cross-project clustering. Presentations from this two day event are available here.

Synergies and possibilities for clustering for AMBASSADOR were especially identified with FP7 projects RESILIENT, E-HUB and FC-DISTRICT. Possible common activities of these projects with AMBASSADOR will be considered and established during following months.

On December 11th and 12th 2012 AMBASSADOR kick-off meeting took place in Grenoble, France. During an intensive two days meeting organised by the project coordinator Schneider Electric the partners had not only the opportunity to present their organisations and their involvement in the project, but also to discuss the first tasks to be delivered in following months. A first Generally Assembly was also held to make some important decisions for a smooth progress of the project.

AMBASSADOR FP7 project has been launched on November 1st 2012 and will last for 4 years until October 2016.

Brief facts on AMBASSADOR are available here.