On 21-22 March 2023 representatives of the Ulysseus alliance gathered in Nice to participate in the first summit of the year. The activities of this event included the opening of the first Ulysseus Living Lab of the Ageing and Well-being Innovation hub, the launch of Match4Cooperation and meetings on the progress of Ulysseus.
With occasion of the Summit in Nice, Ulysseus European University launched its new social network for researchers: Match4Cooperation (M4C). This is an open-source tool that aims to be a social network to connect all Ulysseus academics, raise equal awareness of EU research project calls and promote research mobility within Ulysseus. This social network is powered by Mastodon technology and code and allows researchers to share their work, react to each other’s achievements and have personal conversations in a secure environment. As a special event to celebrate the launch of M4C, Ulysseus has launched a competition offering the opportunity to fund a conference of their choice to two young researchers.
On March 21, Jeanick Brisswalter, President of Université Côte d’Azur, opened the first Ulysseus Living Lab based in Nice. During his presentation he stated that “Université Côte d’Azur Innovation Hub “can coordinate many research and innovation initiatives on the territory of ageing and is also a way to create a continuum between fundamental research and the creation of start-ups”. Also, he underlined the importance on this subject for their region and in Europe. As part of the Ulysseus Innovation Ecosystem, the Innovation Hub of Ageing & Well-Being aims at creating a «living laboratory » that will include a learning Lab, a start-up incubator, a data warehouse and this Living Lab. These tools will enable the development of new technologies, the improvement of care and assistance to people.
During the summit, students had the opportunity to live an inmmersive experience of what a Living Lab is and what it can be in the near future. They had the opportunity to confront their ideas with people from very different research fields. They discovered the benefits of working with people coming from very different cultural and professional backgrounds and its impact on their creativity and opened new ways of looking at problems. They were given the opportunity to recreate what a living lab is by playing different roles (researchers; patients; designers; students; administrators).
