New EU project ALIPRO – Pushing the integration of research programmes on mobile communications

A recently started EU project is pushing for a better integration of research programmes on mobile communications in Europe. Under the project name ALIPRO, a consortium led by the Polish MOST Foundation aims at supporting the alignment of the new member states’ national and regional research programmes with European IST research in the area of mobile technologies, applications, and services.

The project will accelerate the creation, improvement, and alignment of mobility-related national and regional activities and programmes in the new member states and accession candidate countries, strengthening their integration on European level. ALIPRO will achieve this goal through benchmarking, vision-building and roadmapping as well as dissemination of the results to the relevant stakeholders. In this context, ALIPRO will conduct a survey on the national programmes in each country.

Another important goal of the project is to gather mobile-technology experts from the new member states and accession candidate countries and involve them into the work of eMobility, the Mobile and Wireless Communications and Technology Platform for concentrating European research resources in the mobile and wireless area. In order to assure a significant impact, ALIPRO will disseminate its results to the relevant stakeholders through a web-based information platform, a workshop, and presentations at relevant national events.

ALIPRO is a Specific Support Action within EU Framework Programme 6. The project is performed by a consortium of 14 organisations from all new member states as well as Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Germany. “This composition will ensure representative benchmarking results and a broad European vision,” explained professor Mieczyslaw Muraszkiewicz from the Foundation for Mobile Open Society through wireless Technology (MOST), the project co-ordinator.

ALIPRO is supported by the governments of Poland and Lithuania and by the Romanian parliament. The project started in March 2005 and has a duration of one year. ALIPRO’s goals go beyond aligning and integrating research programmes. “We intend to start a process of further improvement of scope and quality of the research programmes in the new member states and accession candidate countries,” said professor Muraszkiewicz.