The R&E WG has been working on different activities since September 2016

What have we done so far…

This group initiated its activities at the FIWARE Workshop held at the TEC de Monterrey Auditorium in “Campus Mexico” on Sept 7, 2016. In this event, CUDI invited its members from the research and academic sector. The FIWARE Mexico partners raised their awareness of the project and its objectives. They demonstrated how to build capacity together with industry, government, academia and civil society representatives in order to initiate the development of a Mexican FIWARE Ecosystem as it has been done in Europe and other parts of the world. Several research and education communities attended and expressed their interest to become part of the R&E WG.

Two member institutions of CUDI manifested their interest in becoming part of the R&E WG of the FIWARE Mexico Project.

• Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) a private university, with the academic group of the Faculty of Engineering of PhD José Incera, and
• Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEMex) a public university, with the research group of PhD Luis Díaz of High Performance Computing.

CUDI with the support from INFOTEC and TEC de Monterrey (the Mexican Partners of the project), met with both institutions separately to identify researchers, professors and students from graduate and undergraduate schools of engineering willing to participate in the R&E WG for different purposes, closely related to their current lines of research and education and their collaboration with local governments.

1. ITAM identified its participation through the creation of:

A community of higher education of the Faculty of Engineering. that would be able to build a critical mass of students, entrepreneurs and professors knowledgeable in cloud-based infrastructures using Open Stack and FIWARE technology to activate innovation and capacity building for the use of one of the main nodes of the FIWARE Platform, the Future Internet National Laboratory (LaNIF) in Mexico leaded by INFOTEC.

1. UAEMex identified its participation through:

The collaboration of researchers and graduate students with the municipal government of the City of Toluca in the State of Mexico, to build projects on smart cities and video surveillance applications using FIWARE technology and infrastructure in order to be able to provide specialized services for the community.

Both institutions committed to participate throughout the two-year duration of the project.

Four academics from ITAM a private University and four researchers from UAEMex as well as one academic from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), were trained as trainees and developers, with the intention to introduce a Technical Group on FIWARE as part of the Network Development Committee at CUDI.

As part of its commitments, CUDI included in its 2017 Annual Meeting, held in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco on May 29 to June 2^nd, three activities related to FIWARE Mexico and SDK projects:

1. A FIWARE training workshop for developers,
2. A FIWARE Hackathon, and
3. An Open FIWARE Camp for to gather the three working groups (Industry, R&E and Users).

Three teams from the R&E WG were prepared to participate in the three activities:

1. The Health community represented by the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) leaded by Nancy Gertrudiz as specialist in ICT for Health and 5 high school students of VOCA 5 Institution;
2. the video Surveillance community leaded by Luis Díaz of UAEMex accompanied by 4 graduate students and
3. the capacity building community leaded by José Incera and Jorge Carlos Urteaga Engineering faculty at ITAM and 4 undergraduate students.

Other academics and researchers from the Energy and Health sectors were invited to participate in the Open FIWARE Camp. The Mexican experts were invited via e-mail and an information kit was prepared for them to raise their awareness of the role they will play in the R&E WG and in the three aforementioned activities.

In general the R&E WG had a positive and proactive participation in the three activities developed at the CUDI2017 meeting. These activities were recorded and videos are available at http://www.cudi.edu.mx/cudi2017/videos_FIWARE.html

With the experience gained at the Training, the Hackathon and the Open FIWARE Camp the R&E WG indicated it is ready to accomplish the objectives and goals described in Task 2.2. provided they cooperate and find synergies with the other two working groups, and network, ideally using liaisons with European successful initiatives.

The R&E WG working plan

Experts meet every three months virtually using VC-CUDI, and desirably during the Open FIWARE Camp events, if travel expenses are available.

Awareness activities as well as focused workshops will aim at educating the Mexican R&E communities about the capabilities of the technology. Through these means an increasing community of R&E will understand how FIWARE can address their needs and facilitate the creation of effective solutions on research and education programs.

Creating awareness about the capabilities of the FIWARE platform and its components in a way that can be easily understood and mapped into the Mexican R&E communities’ context will be crucial to ensure effective impact for the whole FIWARE/FIWARE Mexico driven actions.

As of today the interested participants in the R&E WG coming from research and education communities have identified their work with FIWARE from different perspectives:

Two great themes will lead the work: 1) Education and 2) Research.

• Education

The intention is to become more aggressive and open more possibilities to train more universities and research centers.

1^st. line: creation of the FIWARE technical group at the Network Development Committee of CUDI.

The insertion of this technical group helps the massive training of technical communities and science communities in the use of this technology, platform and philosophy.

José Incera will lead the group and will prepare a Work Plan for 2018. This group will also be responsible for the training of the two selected communities Energy and Health for the development of proposals of products in these two sectors.

CUDI will arrange meetings with CIAPEM, ANUIES and FYMPES to include FIWARE training courses for their members.

On October 4, 2017 within the ANUIES-TIC 2^nd.Encounter the R&E WG managed to invite 8 CIOs from the main Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers of Mexico, this group will begin acting as the FIWARE Technical Group at CUDI.

On the 9&10 of November, 2017 at the CICESE premises in Ensenada, BC Mexico, the R&E WG together with the Industry WG arranged a training program for FIWARE developers for the community of High Performance Computing of the CONACYT thematic network, Red Mexicana de Supercómputo (RedMexSu).

2^nd. Line: Develop high quality training material in Spanish that supports the growth of the Mexican and Latin American FIWARE ecosystem.

CYTED calls for proposals may be a means to extend the knowledge to Iberoamerica

• Research

1^st. line of research: Develop data analytics connected to smart grids which implies a prove of concept. The intention is to build a methodology that reduces the learning curve for those who require applications or services on smart grids. Participants: INEEL and ITAM.

Activity to be developed: ad hoc training to be developed for the researchers of the INEEL in order to select a group to develop this line of research. On December 1^st, 2017 at the INEEL premises, in Cuernavaca Morelos, José Incera expert, gave an introductory training workshop to different departments of Energy within the National Institute of Electricity and Clean Energy.

2^nd. line of research: Intelligent lighting for applications in highways and railroad ports. Face recognition for security and video/surveillance. The team will develop the applications and will integrate them to FIWARE. Participants are UAEMEX, the Industry WG Leader, experts from the R&E WG and invited parties from Philips Company and CIAO (a highway and railroad port operator).

Activity accomplished: On October 5, 2017 CUDI arranged a meeting with Philips Mexico and CIAO Company. Attendees: form Philips Mexico, Jorge Avila Director of Philips Professional, Philips Lightning Mexico, Carlos Contreras, National Sales Manager Public Sector and Gerardo Hernández, Accounts and Key Alliances Manager; from CIAO, Carlos Santillan Partner of a railroads and transport company currently participating as manager and supervisor of the highway Golfo-Centro (BANOBRAS); and from FIWARE Mexico Miguel González, Expert José González, Israel Tavarez (UAEMex), and Salma Jalife.

It was an opportunity to understand how Philips has positioned the company in the lightning sector from a product seller to a Light as a Service provider. In summary, some lightning basic services have been already developed by Philips and they are currently selling managed services to public authorities. However, there are areas of opportunity for the FIWARE R&E WG in developments that have not been thought by Philips innovation area in the Netherlands. In order to be able to interact with this area, Philips Mexico indicated the R&E WG needs to make a case, otherwise the R&D area at Philips would not be attracted to participate in the FIWARE ecosystem. On the other hand, CIAO has different needs that are not available in the market that could be developed by our researchers. We will follow up in both directions.

3^rd. line of research: health- building applications for this sector – a meeting was held with Physician Tanimoto and Eng. Gertrudiz to identify a work plan for 2018 on FIWARE use for Telemedicine at the INCMNSZ. A second meeting will take place on the second week of January, 2018.

4^rd. line of research: pattern recognition, create a technical group within the CUDI-CDR leaded by UAEMex to look for different challenges related to pattern recognition.

5^th. line of research: security & video surveillance. UAEMex has approached the C5 group at the city of Toluca, they need face recognition applications for videosurveillance and security systems in the city. CUDI is arranging a 2^nd meeting with C5 of Toluca by mid January 2018.

We will periodically update our activities to keep you informed.