Open Call for scale-ups and SMEs from Southern Europe to join S3E Reverse

The Challenges

• Collaborative Intelligence in the Service of Humanity
  • Solution needed: How can AI be designed to prioritise collaborative intelligence and effectively address human needs? Are there concrete use cases? The solution will need to demonstrate how AI can addressing specific human/business needs in various sectors (e.g. healthcare, agriculture), focusing on the collaborative intelligence aspect of AI.
• Route Optimisation for Meter Reading Collection
  • Solution needed: Water meter routes currently lack geographical optimization. Considering traffic patterns and existing route parameters, can you develop a route optimisation tool for cost and time efficiency using geographical and network analysis?
• Improving User Experience for Data Protection and Privacy
  • Solution needed: How can users have more control over health data usage, enhancing trust in data sharing for research? Help us design user-friendly and secure solutions giving citizens and patients greater control over their health data; consider routine and research workflows.
• Integrating collaborative robots into various facets of the food production industry
  • Solution needed: Address the integration of collaborative robots (cobots) in the food production industry focusing on hygiene, safety, adaptability, human collaboration, quality control, traceability, sustainability, and resource efficiency. They’re looking for innovations in cobot technologies that enhance food safety, adapt to diverse environments, facilitate human-robot collaboration, ensure product quality, and promote sustainability.
• Weather Radar Interference
  • Solution needed: 3DSA’s weather radars are experiencing interference from wireless communication devices operating on the same frequencies. This disrupts weather monitoring, potentially impacting storm tracking and warnings. They need solutions or technologies that can mitigate or filter severe interference on weather radar output, while maintaining accuracy in detecting precipitation and storm behaviour.
• Reduction of Free Melamine Content in Wastewater
  • Solution needed: Due to melamine’s carcinogenic classification, how can it be removed from wastewater in processes like decorative paper impregnation? To tackle this challenge, you need to develop a competitive, industrially-applicable, and scalable solution to remove free melamine from wastewater without impacting current production processes.
• Automobile Sales Forecasting with AI: Reducing Deviation Rates and Improving Accuracy
  • Solution needed: Collaboration with a startup offering AI solutions can lead to more precise and reliable sales forecasts for Otokoç Otomotiv. Improved forecasting accuracy enables better business planning and strategy development. The use of advanced technology can help in adapting to market dynamics, especially with the evolving landscape of electric vehicles, and make informed decisions.
• AI Based Damage Inspection
  • Solution needed: A product or platform to detect vehicle damages using image processing technology. It should provide quick reports on the vehicle’s condition based on the detected damages. The solution should also analyze the cost of damages and provide information on whether vehicle parts need replacement, along with the associated prices.
• Creation of lightweight installation structure
  • Solution needed: The solution should facilitate the easy installation and removal of plastic bottles, be economically and sustainably produced, and enhance the aesthetic appeal of the installations.
• Enhancement of Operational Efficiency and Industry 4.0 Adoption
  • Solution needed: SOLIMPEKS faces challenges in various operational aspects, including investment planning, plant commissioning, facility layout, digital marketing and Industry 4.0 implementation. These challenges result in increased costs, reduced productivity, and decreased competitiveness. Addressing these issues requires adoption of advanced project management methodologies for investment commissioning, lean manufacturing principles for facility optimization, investment in digital marketing training and tools, and implementation of Industry 4.0
• Reduction of Food Waste in Aquaculture
  • Solution needed: Incorporate bioprocessing and extraction technologies, green chemistry, materials science for biomaterial development, and AI for waste characterization and process optimization to tackle food waste effectively.
• c-BEMS + CO2 Emissions Calculator
  • Solution needed: Advanced AI/ML algorithms for real-time energy management and emissions calculation, integration of IoT platforms for device and protocol management, and development of user-friendly interfaces for global remote monitoring.
• Internationalization of R&D
  • Solution needed: A system capable of streamlining regulatory compliance, optimizing budget, ensuring technical scalability, minimizing environmental impact, and attracting skilled labor. There needs to be an emphasis on developing unique selling propositions and setting realistic development and market entry timelines.

Eligible Countries

The S3E Reverse Open Call for Solvers welcomes applications from startups and SMEs based in:

• South European countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.
• Associated countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Turkey.

How it works?

• SMEs and scaleups interested in participating are invited to submit a solution to address one of the challenges they’ve received from large organisations. The deep tech brokers will select the most mature and fitting ‘Solver’, according to the ideas or products submitted, and match them with the challenger organisation.
• Through S3E Reverse, the selected SMEs and scale-ups will benefit from a customised innovation support program designed specifically for them, which includes 1-1 business coaching and technology brokerage services.
• The programme will operate on a first-come, first-served basis; when a match is identified by the Broker, the Challenger and the Solver will be notified so they can start working together.

Eligibility Criteria

• S3E Reverse is launching its first open call for applications for Solvers: start-ups and SMEs with deep tech solutions to overcome the challenges.
• Any kind of SME can participate as long as it meets the following criteria:
  • Is established in any country of the Southern European science-based innovation ecosystem is eligible for the Horizon Europe program including associated countries.
  • Is capable of addressing a challenge that has been submitted as part of the conducted open call for Challenges and which is related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Can justify the development and/or deployment of a Deep Tech solution.

For more information, visit South3E.