Enhancing Portugal’s international collaboration in the digital domain
Braga, June 26, 2019: EIT Digital, a leading European digital innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation, today opened its new Braga Satellite.
Supported by the Government of Portugal and hosted by the University of Mino, the EIT Digital Braga Satellite will contribute to achieving the Portuguese Government’s goals to fully integrate Portugal in the larger European innovation ecosystem, increase investment in R&D, enhance university-industry knowledge exchange, develop digital skills across the board, and promote Portugal’s offer to investors and talent.
At the opening ceremony, Portugal’s Minister for Science, Technology, and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, said: “The establishment of EIT Digital in Portugal represents a significant step towards our ultimate goal of doubling the Portuguese participation in EU related programs in the upcoming framework program for 2021-2027, as compared with the current 2014-2020 program. This has been established in the context of ‘Portugal in Europe Research and Innovation Network – PERIN’ and under our Portugal INCoDe.2030 Initiative, which was framed in a European context and aims to improve Portugal’s position and competitiveness, working towards securing a prominent place in terms of digital competences in the coming decade.
Through EIT digital, we must work collectively to strengthen knowledge production and diffusion in areas such as handling and analysing of big data, computational biology and bioinformatics, photonics, advanced computing in general, cognitive computing and automatic learning, cybersecurity, and cyber-physical systems. Together with our common efforts in Artificial Intelligence - ‘AI Portugal 2030’ - and Advanced Computing - ‘Advanced computing Portugal 2030’ - we should guarantee the qualification and specialization of the labour force to foster better jobs throughout all sectors of the economy.”
With an annual budget of €100 million to drive Europe’s digital transformation, EIT Digital invests to accelerate the market uptake of research-based digital technologies focusing on Europe’s strategic, societal challenges: Digital Industry, Digital Finance, Digital Cities, Digital Wellbeing and Digital Tech.
“The new Braga Satellite will allow EIT Digital to deepen connections with the Portuguese innovation ecosystem and intensify our relationship with the Portuguese Private and Public Sectors,” said EIT Digital CEO Willem Jonker.
EIT Digital is one of eight Innovation Communities of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. It has 10 Co-Location Centres across Europe and the Braga Satellite is the first to be opened in Portugal.
The Braga Satellite will serve all regions of Portugal on focus on three core tasks: (1) Engagement of industrial and knowledge partners from the Portuguese ecosystem in EIT Digital’s Focus Areas; (2) Proactive scouting and coordination of impactful opportunities for collaborative innovation commercialisation by companies and universities across Portugal; and (3) Design, organization and delivery of networking activities between the business and academic communities in Portugal and the EU-wide EIT Digital ecosystem in order to achieve mutual cooperation, program alignment and commercial success.
