The 4th SEnDIng transnational project meeting took place in Dublin, Ireland, on 7th-8th November 2019 and was hosted by Universal Learning Systems. During the first day, the discussion was focused on the core WPs of the project: recruiting of trainees and hosting companies, the logistics, schedule and management of the online part of the training (WP5) and the certification criteria and process (WP4). The second day was focused on the horizontal activities of the project for quality assurance, evaluation, dissemination (scheduling and logistics of workshops in January 2020), and project management and financial issues. The meeting was closed with the presentation of the third year’s work-plan, schedule of the next project meeting, and evaluation of the meeting.

We are pleased to announce that the SEnDIng training starts in January 2020 and ends in August 2020. The training will be delivered into three phases:

• Phase 1: 103 hours asynchronous online training from January to March 2020.
• Phase 2: 20 hours face to face training that will be held in Athens, Patras, Nicosia and Sofia during 2 weekends of March 2020
• Phase 3: 4 months work based learning (in the form of on-the-job training) from April to August 2020. On-the-job training will take place at the premises of the businesses expressing interest to participate in the training.

The weekly schedule of the online training is available at http://sending-project.eu/index.php/en/vet-program/training-faqs, along with the prerequisites for trainees’ participation in terms of educational background and work experience.

At the end of the training program the trainees will be asked to take a final exam based on multiple choice questions to get the training program’s certification. Trainees are eligible to take part in the final exam leading to the certification, given that they have successfully attended the online Data Science and/or the IoT training, the face to face training and the work based learning.

SEnDIng project is in its 3rd year of implementation, having successfully closing its second year in November 2019. During the second year, the core deliverables of the project were implemented: the training material for Data Science, Internet of Things and transversal skills and the online training platform. A call for expressing interest for participation in the Data Science and IoT trainings have been published and the final trainees have been selected (158 professionals). Furthermore, a first draft of the certification framework for Data Science and Internet of Things was implemented. At the same period, the project interim report was submitted and positively evaluated, confirming the high quality work performed by the project consortium.

The last year of the project will be also busy. It is mainly focused on the delivery of the VET program, the evaluation of the project and its smooth close.

University of Patras, coordinator of SEnDIng project, participated in 28th ICDE World Conference on Online Learning (WCOL2019), one of the largest and most prestigious international conferences in the area. The conference was organized in Dublin, Ireland (3-7 November 2019) aiming to explore many of the contemporary problems and opportunities facing today’s educators in the globally connected digital-era.

During the conference, Dr. Gkamas presented the article “Bridging the skills gap in the Data Science and Internet of Things domains: A Vocational Education and Training Curriculum” describing the SEnDIng curriculum and its development process (the presentation is available here). The presentation has triggered the audience and raised an interesting discussion on the need of curricula that combine technical skills with transversal competences.

The SEnDIng project was presented at the 10th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA 2019), which was held in Patras, Greece, (15-17 July 2019). The IISA conference is technically co-sponsored by IEEE.

During the Posters Session Dr. Rigou presented the macro-level design of the learning outcomes (in terms of knowledge, skills and competences) of the SEnDIng multi-disciplinary VET training for Data Science and IoT. The macro-level design is based on a desktop research and a survey conducted among the VET program beneficiaries, which are companies running Data Science and/or Internet of Things projects. The survey took place in April 2018 and addressed organizations that are knowledgeable and experienced in IoT and Data Science domains.

In addition, SEnDIng was presented during the Projects Session along with other research projects and there was a vivid interest from the audience about the training activities that will be carried out, the recruiting process and the methodological approach to work-based training.

The Hellenic Facility Management Association organized the 4th Facility Management Conference which took place on November 27, 2019 at Aegli Zappiou, Athens. Compared to previous years, the event was admittedly evolving with a new innovative approach that inspired the participants, by presenting aspects of the Digital Facility Management.

Since buildings account for up to 70% of energy consumption in major cities—and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to statistics cited by Connected Cities USA, technologies that can contribute to the reduction of these figures are of great importance. Taking also into account that effective Facility Management includes additional services and actions such as those related to occupants’ safety, comfort and smooth operation of buildings’ equipment, the event revealed the necessity of sophisticated digital systems that process and correlate high volume of data generated by autonomous subsystems. The event concluded that integration of digital FM services is the only way to achieve best possible efficiency regarding building operating cost and wellbeing.

Dr. Alex Maniatopoulos (in the middle of the panel), CEO of Yodiwo, partner of SEnDIng consortium, presented Yodiwo innovative IoT platform for Facility and Energy management which enables unprecedented integration of digital FM services at various levels: The company’s edge computing technology, able to run on numerous hardware platforms, is used to collect and aggregate data from wireless sensors, from legacy building management systems and even from its embedded machine vision algorithms that process images captured by local cameras. The backend system of the platform, running on a server which may reside either in private premises or a public cloud, manages thousands of edge devices and processes their data, based on rules imported by FM experts. The backend system also interacts with other systems such as Computer Aided Facility Management tools, Building Information Management or ERP Systems. The platform also incorporates build-in or 3rd party analytics and advanced data visualization to drive the decision-making process of Facility Managers towards more energy-efficient buildings for a healthier and safer environment

Dr. Maniatopoulos analyzed the technologies that compose such an advanced IoT system and emphasized on the role of competent IoT and Data Science experts for the development of similar solutions, urging the attendants to follow the activities of SEnDIng project.

Code Runners, partner of SEnDIng consortium, participated in the QuBit conference, held in Sofia, Bulgaria on 14 November 2019. QuBit is a cybersecurity community event which is taking place each year in the region of Central Europe. It aims to connect regional communities in order to become a united international cybersecurity community. The event was organized for first time in Prague on 2014. The 5th annual conference held on 2018 attracted more than 250 professionals.

Code Runners tech lead Dimiter Shalvardjiev presented how Machine Learning raises the stakes on both sides of the information security barrier. The focus of the talk was on the various ways in which Machine Learning supports both offensive and defensive information security practices. Dimiter gave relevant examples of Machine Learning applications providing enhanced protection compared to conventional information security practices. Dimiter also presented recent real-life case studies on data security violation and how a professional can manage with them using Machine Learning technologies.

If you are interested to learn more about IoT security and Machine Learning applications please follow SEnDIng online courses for Data Science and IoT!