Prof Tekinay reviewing the EU-Brazil Research Projects in Brazil

Prof. Şirin Tekinay, member of SEFI Board of Directors, has been serving as an expert reviewer for, and a monitoring expert for research and innovation cooperation for the EU-Brazil (EUB) collaboration program. Recently, she was in Brazil to evaluate the progress of two EUB collaboratives.

There have been 4 Coordinated Calls for Project Proposals of the EU-Brazil Research Collaboration Programme, formulated by the European Commission and the Brazilian Government (currently Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa RNP) 2011, 2013, 2015, and most recently, 2017. The first 3 EU-Brazil Coordinated Calls ended up funding 5, 4 and 5 projects, respectively, while the last one supported 6.

On May 13 and 14, Prof. Tekinay was in Porto Alegre for the final review of the FUTEBOL Project. The meeting was hosted by Unisinos. FUTEBOL one of the EUB-2015 projects has successfully formed the Federated Union of Telecommunications Research Facilities for an EU-Brazil Open Laboratory (FUTEBOL). The main goal of FUTEBOL was to develop and deploy research infrastructure and an associated control framework for experimentation in Europe and Brazil, that enables experimental research at the convergence point between optical and wireless networks.

On May 16 and 17, she traveled to Santa Rita do Sapucaí for the 1st period review of the Project “5GRange; Remote area Access Network for 5th Generation,” hosted by Inatel (Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações). 5G Range is an EUB 2017 project. In EUB 2017 6 projects concerning 3 main areas were selected: Cloud Computing;  Internet of Things (IoT) Pilots; and 5G Networks. 5G Range was the one selected project in the 5G Networks category. The goal of the 5G-RANGE project is to design, develop, implement and validate the mechanisms to enable the 5G network to provide an economically effective solution for Internet access for remote areas. Prof. Tekinay notes, it was exciting to travel in rural Brazil amidst coffee plantations, to see the Base Stations and visit the elementary school in Escola Municipal Mariquinha Capistrano, to observe the R&D work she had reviewed on paper, now in place changing underprivileged students’ lives by providing Internet access and experiential learning. The photos are with the mayor of Santa Rita (the city known as the “electronic valley,”) who was the former director of Inatel Tecnologias, the Director of Education in the State, and the Director of the school.