Stronger network for research and industry sector to bring Europe to a more competitive level

Ireland’s DIH in AI, CeADAR is based in two of the largest universities in Ireland (UCD Dublin and TU Dublin) and centers its activity in applied research with the goal of catalysing the adoption or AI in the Irish an European industry econsystem. Funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA, which are the two main governmental agencies that promote industry and channel funding to help SMEs, MNC, and Startups with the digitalisation process. “DIHs are the channels to do so”, afirms Ricardo Simon Carbajo, Head of Innovation and Development of CeADAR. This is the reason why there is a lot of emphasis in the Digital Innovation Hubs at a national and European Level to bring Europe to a more competitive level in innivation and digitalisation world-wide. Creating a stronger network of DIHs to better support companies, in this case, SMEs in the manufacturing sector is the proof of the importance of DIH-World Project.

Supporting companies as a DIH

Simon states that “we have a very complete set of services which are well organised to fulfill the demands of companies in any vertical at the different stages of maturity”. A maturity model to evaluate technical and business competences in AI, from where CeADAR engages in brainstorming and workshop activities to assess the needs of the SME or MNC. Both demonstrators in key areas identified by member companies as an open innovation service available to them, as well as applied research AI projects specifically for companies to help develop or improve their products.
The DIH-World network is a great channel for CeADAR to increase its connections in Europe and to offer more opportunities to the Irish industry ecosystem to scale. Services such as strategic advisory and AI roadmap creation, training for the staff, networking events, infrastructure as a service for “test before invest” with powerful computing platforms, ecosystem building and help access the European landscape when companies need to scale or increase visibility.

Being part of DIH

Initially including 27 DIHs and 8 SMEs, and as it is expanding, the DIH-World network is powerfull, as it offers the access to collaboration in Europe. According to Ricardo, “there are many opportunities for us to share and learn best practices from DIHs across Europe, for example via the Twinning Academy and other activities that DIH-World is promoting”.