Ateknea in Malta Business Review

Ateknea has been featured in one of Malta’s leading business magazines, the Malta Business Review.

The article, published in the margins of a EU funding info day for SMEs in Malta co-organised by Ateknea Solutions’ office in Valleta, features an in-depth interview with Ateknea Regional Manager David Micallef and Innovation Manager Lorraine Tagliaferro.

The objective behind the article and the Info Day was to raise awareness of EU funding programmes for SMEs in Malta and to strengthen the Ateknea brand in the growing Maltese market.

Ateknea_Malta_InfoDay2015

Miklós Zoltai, CEO Ateknea Solutions (centre) and David Micallef (right), Regional Director Ateknea Malta, during the Info Day

According to Micallef “Every SME in Malta is eligible for most of the funding programmes”. “Our aim is to provide relevant knowledge that could help SMEs to decided on the best route for funding of their concepts and products”, he added.

To find out more on Ateknea Malta and see the full article click here.

For more information contact david.micallef@ateknea.com.

Ateknea sponsors Malta Horizon 2020 Info Day

Ateknea will be sponsoring and actively taking part in a Horizon 2020 Info Day  for SMEs in Sliema, Malta on Friday, 2 October 2015.

The main objectives of the event is to foster innovation in Maltese SMEs, to promote their participation in high-tech projects and to make businesses aware of funding options available to carry out their innovation and business development.  Read more

ICT4WATER agenda announced

The agenda for ICT4WATER Open Day has now been finalised ahead of the event due to take place on 22 September in Barcelona.

ICT4WATER is an EU initiative to promote ICT in water management and gathers 15 projects co-funded by the European Commission that aim to address challenges facing sustainable water management and how ICT technologies can help both water utility companies and household consumers. Read more

Ateknea high quality rate in proposals

Ateknea Solutions has achieved high levels of quality in proposals submitted to the European Commission, increasing its clients’ chances of obtaining EU funds for innovation and business activities. Read more

Clampit welding project successfully completed

CLAMPIT – a design software for welding clamps in metal work – has come to a successful close after a 2-year R&D project cycle.

Elevated temperatures and external forces during welding processes often cause materials to deform and distort, rendering the material unsuitable for use. This in turn leads to increased manufacturing costs, material waste and lost time adding more burdens to European metal-working companies.

The European welding industry in a nutshell:

  • added value estimated at €86 million;
  • represents 6% of the whole production sector;
  • employs over 2 million people.

With the support of EU funding, the Clampit project has developed a high-end decision support system to automate clamping design calculations for SMEs in the welding business.

The system uses computer-aided design to determine the optimal distribution of clamping points and clamping forces for a given weldment configuration based on previous welding works stored in the software’s knowledge base thus helping the system to learn from each weld.

Furthermore, Clampit includes a fast and efficient distortion prediction module incorporating low-stress, no-distortion technology. As a result, it cuts costs and time while increasing the performance of welding fixtures and product quality by reducing engineers’ margins for error.

The two-year long Clampit project was coordinated by Ateknea Solutions Hungary with the participation of Boluda División Industrial S.I (Spain), Barida Makina Ltd. (Turkey), Nemetschek Ltd. (Bulgaria), PRVÁ ZVÁRACSKÁ (Slovakia), TWI Limited Ltd. (UK), Robotec (Slovakia) and Intern Kft. (Hungary). The project was co-funded by the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7).

More info:

www.clampit.eu

info.budapest@ateknea.com

UrbanWater in EU drive for better water management.

UrbanWater – a project coordinated by Ateknea – has been included in an EU-wide initiative for better water management using ICT.

The European Commission, calling for better use of water information systems to measure water quality and quantity as well as promoting new methods for water recycling and reuse processes, has brought together a range of projects from FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes in a bid to raise awareness and tackle these water challenges.

The ICT4WATER ‘cluster’ comprises 15 projects that place ICT at the heart of water management efficiency and address many of the drawbacks both suppliers (water utility companies) and consumers (households) face in water management. 

UrbanWater, is an innovative modular ICT system for water utility companies to smooth water consumption peaks through adaptive pricing. It also engages ever more conscious consumers to better monitor their water consumption and incorporates state-of-the-art technology to deliver:

  • Advanced metering solutions
  • Real-time communication of consumption data
  • New data management for water demand forecasting and
  • Consumption patter interpretation.

UrbanWater is currently  under the validation phase. Three pilot tests are being carried out with established water utility companies in Almería (Spain), Algarve (Portugal) and Jonnovice (Czech Republic) with over 100 households set to test the system.

The ICT4WATER promotional video featuring UrbanWater can be found below.

 

 

For more information on UrbanWater visit www.urbanwater.eu or contact elisenda.lamana@ateknea.com

Citizenergy Platform

A greener Europe depends on us

Today and tomorrow Ateknea Solutions is attending the conference on technology challenges and regional approaches for integrating renewables and energy security. The #EUTechRES Conference has been organised by the EU’s Directorate-General for Energy in Brussels.

To accomplish its transition to a low-carbon society by 2050, the EU has adopted a set of intermediate climate and energy targets for the following decades. The energy sector and especially the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are now facing an ambitious transformation process. As contributors to this transition, RES are able to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), replace fossil fuels as the main energy source and lower other environmental pressures associated with conventional energy production.

As part of our commitment to a greener Europe, Ateknea Solutions has launched a new research project to create a new, smart, on-line platform for citizens’ investment in renewable energy: Citizenergy.

Since March 2014, our engineers and project managers have been working together with 13 other European bodies to develop this initiative that will let individuals support and invest in renewable energy projects and share in the benefits of producing clean energy. This project has received the support of Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE).

The beta version is already available and a lot of effort has been put in to promoting the projects potential, citizen engagement and new RES activities. For further information,

  • watch our latest video:

  • Visit the Citizenergy Platform beta version here.
  • Read the lastest RES report by the European Environment Agency, “Renewable energy in Europe – approximated recent growth and knock-on effects”, download it here.
TU Wien Phenolive

Olives to heat rooms

Ateknea’s experts have visited the facilities of the Vienna University of Technology and Repotec –a leading company specialised in gasification– to see the advancements on the production of thermal energy and electricity from biomass.

Engineers in Austrian capital have been testing the suitability of exhausted olive pomace as fuel for gasification under the Phenolive initiative coordinated by Ateknea. At this stage the research is focused on the gasification of residues from the olive-pressing to be recovered and converted into electricity and heat.

This environmental friendly way to use natural waste has been studied by Dr. Hofbauer from the Vienna University of Technology and his team. The institution has developed a successful gasification process, which has been tested both in the University facilities as well as further improved in the large pilot plants located in Oberwart and Güssing.

Ateknea’s Dr. Montras, added that “eight millions tonnes of pomace by-product are generated every year by the olive oil industry in Europe”. Through Phenolive –a European partnership– academic research and private companies get together again to make the olive sector more competitive through technological innovation.

The Phenolive reseach will be runnig until 2016 with the aim of the fully revalorisation of the olive waste from the oil industry by obtaining high added-value products –antioxidants mainly–, heat and electricity. This will not be possible without the support and involvement of other four participating organisations; Amarante Process, Effitech, Hakki Usta, Laboratoire Phenobio and Mora Industrial.

See more pictures

Divineverse Ateknea Lisbon 2015

Ateknea in global genetics scheme for winegrowers

Today, Ateknea Solutions is at the heart of cutting-edge genetics for food and agriculture. Our representative Dr. Encarnação is attending the first DI(VINE)VERSE International Meeting in Lisbon. This initiative –including a professional seminar with the vitiviniculture and biotechnology communities– has the support of a network of multidisciplinary EU and US organisations covering the entire value chain of wine production.

DI(VINE)VERSE has the ambitious objective of creating and organising a network of on-farm conservation vineyards for intravarietal populations of Vitis vinifera landraces, to be used and explored by breeders and farmers. This network will provide full access to this set of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA), complying with international directives under the International Treaty on PGRFA and the Nagoya Protocol.

This week, Dr. Encarnação is kick-offing Ateknea’s activities with stakeholders at different sites throughout Portugal. Like Ateknea, each partner involved will start working under the common criteria based on the international skills of outstanding academia, technology transfer associations, breeders, nurseries, farmers’ associations, SMEs and large wine-producing enterprises.

Throughout the next couple of months, we will be contributing to the development of DNA-based diagnostic technologies applied for variety identification and to the definition of exploitation routes for the potential results.

Stay tuned for more information on DI(VINE)VERSE here at our News Channel!

New Innovation Union Scoreboard presented today

Today the European Commission has launched the 2015 comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their R&D systems.

Despite the positive trends in 2014 that showed more doctorate graduates, more international scientific co-publications and more community designs, there were also negative issues on the list. The Scoreboard draws a negative trend in innovation in SMEs and European innovations up to the market.

With more jobs in fast-growing companies, such as start-ups, spin-offs and other SMEs competing in innovative sectors, Ateknea Solutions will continue aiming to guide those companies towards a fruitful innovation environment throughout continental Europe.

Sweden continues to be the most innovative Member State, coupled with Denmark, Germany and Finland. On the bottom list, there is Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia. However, both Bulgaria and Latvia are leaders in innovation performance growth. Coupled with the United Kingdom and Ireland, Poland and Malta are also two of our targeted markets which are growing fast and we have strong performance under our Krakow and Valletta Offices.

Globally the EU’s innovation position compared to US and Japan is improving. South Korean power remains as the worldwide leader while China continues to close the innovation gap with the EU. Brazil, Russia and India showed a stagnant position.

Official infographic on ‘Innovation Union Scoreboard’ 2015 here