On april 24th the European Commission awarded, for the first time, Seal of Excellence certificates to 2300 researchers in recognition of their high-quality research proposals under the Horizon 2020 Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). This quality label is awarded to all researchers whose 2016 MSCA Individual Fellowship (IF) proposals scored 85% or above but could not be funded due to the highly-competitive nature of the MSCA programme. The endorsement provides applicants with recognition for the high-quality of their work, which they can use to further develop their careers and to support their search for alternative funding at regional or national level.
Among the receivers of the award is also the CRS4 researcher Cristian Lai. Born and educated in Italy, Cristian obtained the Ph.D in Computer Science in 2011 from the University of Compiègne (France). Since 2000, he has been working for the CRS4 Information Society sector conducting independent and collaborative research in information retrieval, ontology engineering and Internet of Things.
The MSCA IF proposal "MARVIN - Mobile robots and Autonomous Resources in semantic and Versatile Intelligent sensor Networks", in collaboration with the University of Lincoln (UK), is focused on the integration of semantics and robotics in Active and Assisted Living scenarios.