Untitled EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Executive Summary

Establishing long-term links, i.e. beyond the life-time of the FIDIS NoE, between partners is key to ameliorating the research fragmentation issues both at a fundamental level across disciplines and at the broader level across Europe. The specific aim of the FIDIS Doctoral Consortium is to establish an interdisciplinary network of PhD-students through structured events and as such these events are clearly of high value. The consortium is an important integrative and disseminative part of the Network: It connects students and researchers from the disparate FIDIS domains together, fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and is an important platform for networking. Indeed being a heterogeneous environment, the DC meetings are a unique opportunity to exchange ideas and build a true research network.

The target for this Workplan was to build upon previous structured training within the valuable FIDIS PhD student community based on feedback from the students and other participants during previous events held by WP8 and WP15, and from the FIDIS network as a whole. The given objective was to hold one or two further DC events during this period. 

Within the last Workplan period, WP15 has held a successful Doctorial Consortium event on the topic of e-Government and e-Business. Feedback from the participants has been good, although it is acknowledged that a shift in thinking is needed at this stage in the FIDIS project’s lifetime with regard to the DC events. This is especially because few new students have joined the network, and existing students are becoming increasingly time pressured as their studies move toward completion. As such, in addition within this Workplan, rather than planning another smaller DC event, we have diversified in order to encourage students to attend other larger, more established events, while enhancing these events through additional activities where possible. In this case, it has been through the Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2008 symposium, whereby less mature work from a range of disciplines was sought for presentation and discussion during the event and discount registration was offered, and the upcoming larger DC event which, given its popularity, has been extended through combining resources to include more activities then originally envisaged.