BrAIn project’s main objective is to tackle a key challenge – to increase the competitiveness of Danube Region’s SMEs by familiarizing them with the relevance and potential of AI-enabling technologies & equip the main stakeholders with the necessary skills to follow i5.0, to support a sustainable, humancentric & resilient industry in the Danube Region. This aims to be achieved with the technology transfer of novel AI solutions in the key areas, reducing the negative effects of the value chain bottlenecks.

Project budget: 1,874,990.00

Project duration: 30 months / January 2024 – June 2026

Specific objective 1: Enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs by supporting the development of AI-driven applications.

Specific objective 2: Acceleration of transnational uptake of AI technologies in the focus areas by testing new solutions

Specific objective 3: Increase and harmonize the capacity of policymakers to enhance the definition of novel AI policy tools.

Main outputs:

Concrete AI Solutions: Proposed to address challenges in manufacturing, agro-food, and healthcare sectors, with consideration for sustainability.

Piloting solutions to bridge AI-related gaps in the Danube Region, fostering innovative territorial development.

International Approach: Leveraging complementary competencies across regions and sectors, focusing on specialization and knowledge transfer.

Complementary Competencies: Partners bring expertise in key sectors and domains, ensuring effective knowledge diffusion to stakeholders and policymakers.

Innovation: Addressing cutting-edge topics such as AI and Industry 4.0/5.0 skills, implementing place-based pilots to validate Smart Specialization Strategies.

ICT Cluster will contribute to all project activities of the BrAIn project because they are strongly aligned with the mission and objectives of the organization. ICT Cluster plays a strategic role in promoting the competitiveness of the Bulgarian ICT industry and supporting the growth and resilience of ICT SMEs. ICT cluster excellence, creation of new business opportunities through cross-border, cross-industry, and cross-cluster collaboration, and exploit the benefits of digital transformation.

ICT Cluster will be strongly involved in activity 2.4 deploying transnational demo case in manufacturing.  Manufacturing SMEs face huge challenges caused by the value-chain shortage, and lack of human resources, and the demo case will concentrate on 2 aspects of these challenges. The first one is worker’s well-being and satisfaction in the manufacturing process led by ETF and the second aspect will be the energy consumption problems led by ICT. The activity is led by ETF with strong cooperation of ICT and Biz -up and PU will support them, while WRDA and SEZ ensure the intention to tackle the horizontal challenges.

The project is consist by 11 organisations (+10 strategic associated partners) from 10 countries from the Danube region.