The HEART project’s core is composed of six research projects carried out by 6 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) specialised in different disciplines related to ICT, Law and Marketing. Through the project they will reach a PhD level through a phase of highly applied interdisciplinary research in sensitive topics such as:

  • The acquisition and functional analysis of multimodal data streams (smartphones, smartwatches, connected weighing scales, Bluetooth blood pressure cuffs);
  • The diffused and dynamical allocation of data processing, which needs to take into account sensor node resources, privacy requirements and the availability of data;
  • The protection of highly sensitive personal information, to make the system suitable for the commercialization of the resulting products and services;
  • The consumers perspective and market penetration strategy, to allow the European companies working in the IoT field to exploit their potential abroad, with a particular attention to the Chinese market, requiring thus a solid knowledge of the Chinese institutional, industrial and cultural context to facilitate a smooth market penetration by EU firms and a high TRL level.

While carrying out specific research focused on the subjects they specialise in, the ESRs are constantly in touch with each other in order to intersect and correlate their findings to meet the degree of interdisciplinarity required for the achievement of the project’s goal.The six ESRs’ objectives follow a three-phase approach, where the three phases are conceptualisation, development and customisation.

Starting from the definition of the already academically-acquired knowledge, defining the knowledge gaps and research hypotheses and firms’ perspectives on the matter (conceptualisation), the core research phase is carried out, including the collection of data, their analysis, results formulation and validation (development). Finally, sustainable and effective innovation priorities will be identified and strategies shall be formulated actions carried out to enact their implementation in China as well as in other contexts (customisation).

The specific research activity of the ESRs is supported by a series of actions specifically aimed at improving the dimension of multi-disciplinarity of the project, such as training events and meetings, as well as the use of a specifically developed Knowledge Platform for the communication and sharing of results between partners and stakeholders.

Please find out more about HEART research challenges and the ESRs’ individual research projects following these links.