The European R+D+i project ARETE, funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme, has won the Standards+Innovation award presented by the European standardization organizations CEN and CENELEC.
These annual awards recognize the important contribution of research and innovation to standardization, as well as the work of researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The awards are granted to outstanding projects and individuals that have been nominated by national members of CEN and CENELEC, including the Spanish Association for Standardization, UNE.
ARETE was nominated by UNE, which supports the project in the development of standardization activities through a subcontracting agreement. Together, they are developing a new CEN (CEN Workshop Agreement, CWA) standard on augmented reality for educational purposes. The project has made other valuable contributions to standardization, leading the development of new standards at ISO and IEEE.
This project won the award thanks to these contributions to standardization activities, both at European and international level, and because of its technological and social impact. These activities are led by University College Dublin (Ireland) and The Open University (UK) and, in the project consortium, the Basque technology centre Vicomtech is one of the partners.
The UNE is the national standardization organization with the largest presence in European R&D projects, with nearly 100 in its history. This year, four of the six Horizon 2020 programme projects nominated for the awards involved the UNE: SPHERE, which relied on the UNE to set up a new working group on digital twins in construction, within the European Technical Committee CEN/TC 442. STRATEGY, in which the UNE is a partner, together with other national organizations, and together they are developing 11 CWAs and two technical specifications (TS) at CEN and ISO on different aspects of crisis management involving both natural and man-made crises. And lastly, GEOFIT, of which the UNE is also a member, in which it is developing one CWA on the use of geothermal energy to efficiently upgrade buildings.
The awards include two other categories: the first, Individual researchers, in which Professor Juan José Lucena Marotta of the Autonomous University of Madrid was nominated this year for his active participation in CEN/TC 260 on fertilizers, integrating the results of his research activity into the standards. The second, Young researchers, was won by Ivan Navarro González, a Master's student at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, for his study on how the use of standards enhances creativity, contrary to the traditional belief in this regard.
The prize was announced at an online ceremony organized by CEN and CENELEC recently, which featured Stefano Calzolol, the President of CEN, Ludovit Garzik, Director of the Austrian Council for Technology Research and Development, and Lisa Lang, Director of Political Affairs and of the EU at Climate-KIC at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
