All that the 13th edition of the Mobile World Congress 2018 has meant
People associated with the University, researchers, professors, entrepreneurs, alumni, students and young people, have participated in some of the events organized as part of this important meeting, in several of its fields: business, informative, competitive, etc., into which the congress, which attracted more than 107,000 attendees from 26 February to 1 March, is structured.
From 26 February to 1 March the Gran Via of the Barcelona Trade Fair again held the Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC), which closed its 13th edition with over 107,000 attendees.
Business sector: exhibitors and presentations at 4YFN 2018
A total of 32 emerging companies (or start-ups) participated by means of the Generalitat (Government ) of Catalonia in 4 Years From Now (4YFN), the parallel entrepreneurship event to the MWC. 4YFN is a space that has enabled initiatives, investors, corporations and public institutions to discover, create and launch new ventures. The main objective is to ensure that Catalonia is the main hub for companies emerging in the digital environment in southern Europe.
RAPID MIX, a European project coordinated by the Music Technology Group (MTG) and funded by the European Commission’s H2020 was present with a stand with demonstrations and information about products and prototypes developed during the project, as well as a featured presentation: “RAPID MIX: bring cutting-edge technology to the creative industries” by Sergi Jordà (MTG-UPF), Frederic Bevilacqua (IRCAM), Hugo Plácido da Silva (PLUX), and Michael Zbyszynski (Goldsmiths University of London), on 27 February.
Other proposals present at 4YFN at the MWC were presented by startups led by alumni and students of UPF, such as Ethical Time, the application for the promotion of sustainable fashion; Monkingme, a solution to download music legally and free of charge; Sekgtech, Biolnnove, which have been in contact with members of the Innovation Unit - UPF Business Shuttle, also present at the event.
Informative scope: second edition of YoMo with conferences and workshops for young people
Under the MWC brand, the company GSMA held the second edition of the Youth Mobile Festival Barcelona (YoMo Barcelona), a festival aimed to inspire children and young people and help them better understand professional careers in the STEAM sector - Science, Technology, Engineering, Design/Art and Mathematics. YoMo, held from 27 February to 2 March at la Farga de l’Hospitalet, was highly participated in by UPF researchers who gave presentations, interactive workshops and informative talks. YoMo collaborates with Mobile World Capital Barcelona through the mSchools programme, an initiative in collaboration with the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council and GSMA.
Prizes and awards obtained in the course of the MWC
“Towards DrassanesLab: Technology and knowledge against the digital gap”, as a result of the collaboration of different members of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) and the Department of Communication at UPF, with CEIP Drassanes in Barcelona, an initiative which has already won the prize for University Social Responsibility awarded by the UPF Board of Trustees (2017), won the mSchools Mobile Learning Award. The awards were presented on 1 March.
And, finally, the projects RE. FACIL.ES: Easy-to-read summaries for e-inclusion, presented by Horacio Saggion, and Structuring of summaries of biomedical articles for improved reader comprehension, presented by Àlex Bravo, researchers with the Large Scale Text Understanding Systems laboratory, directed by Horacio Saggion at the research group in Natural Language Processing (TALN) at the DTIC, were both winners of a third prize in the second edition of the Language Technologies Hackathon held in the framework of the 4YFN, on 26 and 27 February.