Francesco Mureddu

The Lisbon Council · Policy Research

Large Research Infrastructures in the field of frontier Physics have opened new observational windows to the universe and explore the structure of matter in extreme detail. These advancements require high levels of expertise and sophistication. On the other hand, society, lacking this level of expertise, merely observes these developments through outreach activities but does not actively contribute in the development of new scientific knowledge. This fact induces a gap between frontier science and society that can spawn misconceptions about the content, context and mission of public funded frontier science. The REINFORCE project comes to answer to the questions: a) Can citizens contribute in the development of new knowledge in frontier science? b) Can citizens apply this new knowledge to solve societal problems? c) How can we integrate citizen feedback? REINFORCE goes beyond outreach programmes and aims to minimize the gap between Society and Large Research Infrastructures in the field of Physics through the: i) development and implementation of 4 cutting-edge Citizen Science projects in the fields of Gravitational Waves, Neutrino Astronomy, Particle Physics and Cosmic Ray interplay with geoscience and archaeology with citizens: Citizens will analyze data and support the optimization of sensitive detectors in order to enhance their discovery potential. ii) implementation of a participatory design in citizen science: Communities of citizens will be developed, trained and empowered to contribute in the scientific mission of Large Research Infrastructures. iii) effective inclusion of sensitive citizen groups as well as the active interaction with secondary and tertiary education. iv) Aggregating best practices in a pan-European policy roadmap. REINFORCE aspires to engage more than 100,000 citizens across Europe and beyond, to help enhance society’s science literacy and awareness and to contribute in the production of scientific knowledge by citizens for society.

SALL proposes the living lab methodology as a new technique of unique value and possibilities for the development of open schooling activities linked to science learning. The project positions the technique of living labs as a new, powerful element of the impactful OSOS framework for open schooling, and demonstrates this through the use of the food system theme, due to its strong links to science education, current challenges, as well as ambitious European policy making. SALL brings together school communities, including teachers, students and their families, research institutions, science museums and centres, spaces of informal learning and open innovation such as existing living labs, as well as policy makers, and engages them in intensive dialogue, mutual learning and exchange, so as to: a) co-construct the proposed living-lab-based open schooling methodology, by building on existing knowledge and best practices as well as on the power of synergy in the stakeholder community of contemporary science education; b) closely study living-lab-based open schooling practices and their impact, through implementation and evaluation in real-life conditions in school communities in different European countries; and c) prepare the ground for sustainable living-lab-based open schooling activities in Europe’s schools after the end of the project, through strong community-building, networking, dissemination, as well as policy-oriented interventions. In this way, SALL proposes a concrete new way for schools across Europe to approach their science education programmes, in order to make STEM teaching more relevant, systemic and inclusive for their students, collaborating with their local communities and research centres, and with the active support and involvement of science centres and museums in this process.

In recent years, the concept of cross-border services and data exchange has been an essential part of development in the EU where the services are provided using ICT in an interoperable environment. Since the data exchange is a long way journey, the EC has initiated the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) as an important step to implement the digital revolution in Europe. SDGR brings various services under the same roof to set rules and guidelines on how to implement uniform public services in the member states. However, issues related to the digitisation of services, easy access to information and procedures and new challenges still need to be addressed in order to enable innovation and growth of EU single market. The operation of the SDG is a meaningful step forward in helping cross-border clients to solve many procedures and receive the necessary assistance; however, it should be facilitated by providing the user a guidance in an interactive, easy-to-follow and user-friendly way. Towards these challenges, ACROSS proposes a novel framework aiming to substantially complement SDG and Your Europe portal by leveraging the advanced capabilities of Cloud, privacy-preserving, semantic interoperability, and mobile technologies, to build the next generation Public-Services ecosystem while maintaining the highest privacy level. ACROSS aims to enable user-centric design and implementation of interoperable cross-border public digital services compliant with the current European regulations where the private sector can also interconnect their services while ensuring the data sovereignty of the citizens. ACROSS will be developed and tested in three countries at different points in their digital transformation journeys – Greece, Germany, Latvia – will address and analyse the technological, organisational, administrative, semantic and legal aspects, providing evidence for delivering more efficient cross-border mobility services to the citizens.