Digital Transformation Leader | 25+ Years Driving Innovation Across Europe’s Public and Private Sectors

The Digital Economy Unit (T1) of the EC Joint Research Centre (JRC), in cooperation with other services of the European Commission, is currently working on a number of projects related to the impact of the digital transformation of the economy and society, and in particular on the public sector and public services.

The “Innovative Public Services” project purpose is to investigate the innovation potential and framing conditions of emerging and disruptive technologies (like AI or Blockchain) in support of the digital transformation of the European public sector. The project has the objective of outlining recommendations for EU institutions and Public Administrations to facilitate decision-making on technological evolution of public service provision through these technologies. Another project is the “AI WATCH”, this project monitors and assess European AI landscapes from driving forces to technology developments, from research to market, from data ecosystems to applications. AI WATCH will provide an independent assessment of the impacts and benefits of AI on growth, jobs, education, and society.

• Provide expert advice and assistance (incl. technology watch, evaluation studies, architectural considerations, applicable standards, solution patterns and best practices) on emerging and disruptive technologies, such as Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and on data and service interoperability.
• Authoring scientific reports and research publications on the digitalisation of public services.
• Provide scientific and strategic support to the Public Sector Tech Watch (PSTW) observatory, monitoring the adoption of emerging technologies across European public administrations.
• Supporting the implementation of interoperability assessments as a key pillar of the Interoperability Europe Act (IEA), contributing to evidence-based policymaking and digital governance.

Deep knowledge in several of the following digital transformation technologies: Open Data, APIs, Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning…), IoT, DLT and Blockchain. The methodology is based in follow and, where appropriate, contribute to the scientific approach adopted in the relevant projects. Furthermore, follow the adopted project management approach to conduct and produce results aligned with the requirements and the deadlines.

A detailed description of human mobility is important for characterizing and forecasting the spatial and temporal spread of infectious diseases. The scope of the project is to build and assess a mathematical model to match and predict specific epidemics pattern (like Influenza or the most recent COVID-19) using: Mobile phone mobility network data, the census, weather and environmental data, and clinical data. The outcome of the project shall provide a new set of tools including an Open Access Algorithm to support decision makers make decisions with more accurate data so they can reduce the impact of the epidemic. One of the main priorities is to implement a data processing model that fully guarantees the respect to information of personal character to protect the intimacy and privacy of citizens. In this sense, only anonymous aggregated epidemiological and mobility data is used, following the recommendations and best practices of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the Department of Health of Catalonia.

• Definition of the project scope, calendar and efforts needed in collaboration with the scientists from the different specialties to meet the objectives.
• Project Management and coordination with the communication and dissemination team.
• Relationship with the telecom operators to define the data format to meet the requirements of the scientists involved in the project.
• Report to the steering committee with the project updates.
• Integration of the project results in a report.
• Composing the partnership agreement in collaboration with the legal departments of all entities.

This ambitious public-private initiative joins the efforts of the Generalitat of Catalonia, through the Department of Digital Policies and Public Administration and the Department of Health; medical and health institutions, leading technological innovation and research centers; and Mobile World Capital Barcelona. In addition, the project counts with the collaboration of the GSMA AI for Impact initiative.

In this project Big Data analysis is the main technology involved, as project manager I followed a PMBOK methodology, also contributing to provide the right datasets for the data scientists.

Inspiring Girls Online aims to create a new digital resource of filmed interviews of female role models. Women all over the world would self-record interviews (5-8 minutes) for the website. This project consisted in a real-life pilot in schools to test and validate the Inspiring Girls video hub in order to allow all girls to connect with female role models and validate the usefulness of the Video Hub for girls in raising their career aspirations. This pilot was focused on involving women working in tech as volunteers to become role models, recording video interviews, and connecting with groups of girls in Barcelona. The process of recording videos with women, the facility for schools to arrange live-streamed talks with any of the female role models on the Inspiring Girls database was tested.

• Conceptualization of the use case and preparation of the pilot setup, coordination of the pilot preparation and execution of the project in collaboration with all stakeholders involved: Inspiring Girls, Adolescents.cat, the education department of the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya), who provided schools to pilot this solution, and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).
• Project management: definition of the scope, timeline, composing the project budget and partnership agreement in collaboration with the legal departments of all entities.
• Collaboration with the education department and UPC to define the impact assessment of the pilot, KPI’s, questionnaires, number of sessions and contents with the students.

The project management followed a PMBOK methodology.

Safe To Net is a mobile App that contextualizes harmful bullying and sexual content filtering it before it is sent and before the damage is done using AI and Machine Learning. It helps families to be informed of risks their children face online. SafeToNet also respects a child’s privacy and rights. In this project the app was adapted to the Catalan and Spanish languages and tested in various schools across Barcelona, targeting children between 12 and 14 years old in different socio-economic neighborhoods and from different backgrounds to cover a wide array of linguistic nuances and cultural particularities to demonstrate that SafeToNet can detect and advise parents when cyberbullying is taking place.

• Conceptualization of the use case and preparation of the pilot setup, coordination of the pilot preparation and execution of the project in collaboration with all stakeholders involved: MWCB, Safe To Net, Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Orange and the schools that participated in the project.
• Project management: definition of the scope, timeline, composing the project budget and partnership agreement in collaboration with the legal departments of all entities.
• The app had to be adapted to the Catalan market. Given that the machine learning engine needs to become accurate when it is used for the first time in both Spanish and Catalan, the timeline included a phase called “accuracy testing” period where 17 UPC trainees were adapting the artificial-intelligence-based solution to the Spanish and Catalan environment considering words and phrases used to aggress others online.

The SafeToNet app is installed on family mobile devices, with processing handled in the cloud. It uses AI and machine learning to stop harmful messages before they are sent. It uses natural language processing, behavioral, statistical, probability, predictive, correlative and sentiment analytics to detect potentially harmful behavior without using human analysts, preserving user privacy. It also provides device management and mood sensing services. The project management followed a PMBOK methodology.

Wayfindr Open Standard is a comprehensive set of guidelines, tools and technology to integrate audio navigation into existing digital navigation products. The main objective of the project was to test Wayfindr Open Standard to guide visually impaired people through indoor spaces using audio instructions from their smartphones. It was trialed it in a retail environment in Barcelona with multiple shops and routes to travel. During the execution of the pilot, the users/participants moved around the venue. Information was collected before, during and after the pilot execution, through surveys and through observation. Based on the learnings and insights, the guidance on audio instructions of the protocol was improved and submitted in ITU standardization body in January 2018.

• Conceptualization of the use case and preparation of the pilot project setup, coordination of the pilot preparation and execution of the project in collaboration with all stakeholders involved: Wayfindr, Ilunion and the University of Oslo.
• Project management and coordination: definition of the scope, timeline, composing the project budget and partnership agreement in collaboration with the legal departments of all entities.
• Following the success of the project, involving 40 users selected by the ONCE Foundation, Las Arenas shopping center was the first in Spain to implement this technology and became fully accessible.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology, the indoor location system consisted in beacons, positioned in public locations, that “push” audio digital prompts to digital navigation apps on the user’s mobile phone.

The idea of the project was to create a “touristic Big Data” in the city of Barcelona in order to help organizations in the sector to understand better the tourist experience in Barcelona. Many collaborators participated in this initiative including seven well known touristic organizations of Barcelona. First of all, a technic and legal study was done in order to determine what data from each touristic organization would be relevant to shape the database and, in turn, identify opportunities for using this data. Big Data visualization specialists were responsible for developing an intuitive platform for discovering and predicting the key touristic insights underlying the location, and, to add more value to the platform, a bank (BBVA) provided transactional data of Barcelona for the monitored period and data from social networks was also included.

• Conceptualization of the use case and preparation of the pilot project setup, coordination of the pilot preparation and execution of the project in collaboration with all stakeholders involved: Barcelona Servei Municipals (BSM), Casa Batlló, Fira de Barcelona, Fundació Bancaria “La Caixa”, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Turisme de Barcelona and Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB).
• Project management and coordination: definition of the scope, timeline and partnership agreement in collaboration with the legal departments of all entities. Preparation of the report with the results of the project.
• Organization of workshops, with the touristic entities that participated, in order to understand the challenges and business objectives of each organization, train the employees to use the visualization platform, explain how the data can contribute with value and identify initiatives and collaborations at a mid/long term.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology. Big Data.

Zobele Group is global leader in product development and manufacturing, key partner of the top Home & Personal Care FMCG´s companies, offering customers global solutions and services covering the entire value chain from product innovation and development to manufacturing and delivery.

• Responsible for the Project management and co-ordination of the technical part of the product innovation process and for integrating internal and external technologies inside the innovation projects.
• Technical project management and co-ordination.
• Monitoring the building of engineering prototype for testing and product approval.
• Facilitation of the communication to ensure that the innovation team has all of the relevant questions, answers and roadblocks cleared.
• Cooperation in patent filing and searching.
• Participation in the generation of new concepts.
• Closely work with customers to fix technical specifications.
• Costing estimation and project scheduling.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology. Internet of Things, 3D printing, Injection Molding, Thermoforming, Design Thinking.

The project focuses on the development of horizontal M2M application enablement services and standardization, particularly based on the ETSI M2M (currently OneM2M) standards. Besides that, the project concentrates on enabling and application of autonomic-computing methods in M2M networks to make usage of smart M2M services smoother for both human and machine users. This is a 30 million Euros budget international project lead by VTT of Finland. It brings together 20 participants from 4 different European countries including Gemalto, Bull, LAAS-CNRS from France, Atos Research & Innovation, Tecnalia from Spain, Innova, Ericsson R&D from Turkey.

• WP 6 Leader: monitor the progress of the WP against time and budget allocations, ensure that the WP fulfils the objectives listed as milestones and deliverables; alert the coordinator in case of delay or default in the performance of the WP; deliver progress reports to the coordinator. WP6 was called “Dedicated M2M experiments”, this WP consisted in several experimental vertical business scenarios: Car Sharing Telematics, Smart metering for green energy and Smart Services of Wellbeing M2M objects. Responsible for the Car Sharing Telematics pilot/experiment.
• Country coordinator: responsible of the proposal submitted in the Spanish government call in order to obtain funds, responsible of the project reporting and periodic reviews with the Spanish government.
• Co-author in the scientific publication: Towards Horizontal Architecture for Autonomic M2M Service Networks.
• Align A2Nets results with existing offerings, contributing with innovative solutions to provide Atos clients with tools to deliver valuable improvements in their efficiency, growth and sustainability.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology. In the project, specially in WP6, many technologies were used regarding the application of M2M protocols in real use cases, like web services or REST.

The goal of the LOGSEC project was to develop a strategic roadmap for a large scale demonstration project in European logistics and supply chain security, characterised by adequate security for the benefit of business and governments, on low time-delay and other cost implications. A broad set of security policies, regulations, standards, technologies, procedural aspects, services, IPR-issues and links to other related projects were assessed and evaluated during the project in close collaboration between the beneficiaries and business and governmental security end-users.

• WP 3 Leader, “State of the art”: monitor the progress of the WP against time and budget allocations, ensure that the WP fulfils the objectives listed as milestones and deliverables; alert the coordinator in case of delay or default in the performance of the WP; deliver progress reports to the coordinator. Responsible for the deliverables: D3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.
• Technology watch: responsible for the collection and analysis of the state on the art on the Logistics and supply chain security processes, technologies and services. Analysis of all the state-of-the-art review findings, and conclusions.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology. Key technologies and procedural aspects covered by the project include: Container and goods/inventory, authentication, traceability, inspection and monitoring technologies; Risk assessment systems and models; Information transfer systems; Intermodal transport security; Modernisation of customs procedures; Protection of supply chain infrastructure. The methodology consisted of literature and project reviews; expert interviews; user surveys; user workshops.

The project aimed to promote sustainable intramodality and safety of the freight transport in different means (land, sea and / or air), by improving existing knowledge and generating new control models, management, planning, security and the application of technologies and methodologies that allow the development of an intelligent intermodal freight transport in a global environment.

• WP3 Leader “Location”: monitor the progress of the WP against time and budget allocations, ensure that the WP fulfils the objectives listed as milestones and deliverables; alert the coordinator in case of delay or default in the performance of the WP; deliver progress reports to the coordinator.
• My research activities consisted in a Location Based Services (LBS) research for the freight transport, outdoors and indoors; Analyze the feasibility of combining and integrating different location techniques and methods both indoors and outdoors.
• Study new location methods based on sensor networks.

Project management followed a PMBOK methodology. Key technologies covered by my activities in the project include: UWB (Ultra Wide Band), ZigBee, Bluetooth, RFID.

With over 40 years of expertise in networking, SMC Networks is a global leading equipment provider of gateways and home security customer premise equipment for service providers in North America and internationally. Powered by a seasoned new leadership and a focused engineering team, SMC credits include an extensive portfolio of cost competitive, high-performing solutions.

• Responsible of the set up and run the service center in a cost effective way by performing the relevant test and repair to be done internally, the products were network devices, switches, routers and wireless.
• Also responsible of the logistics of the department, in/out, warehouse, accessories, packaging and statistics.
• Maximise the recycling of defective products into replacement.
• Develop the contacts needed with Taiwan to archive such objectives.
• Implement the procedures and reporting needed to better control the warranty support flow.
• Establish an efficient supply chain for raw material equipment.
• Proactively seek for areas of improvements.
• Potentiate the synergies between logistics and repair center.

Wifi, ADSL, MIMO (Multiple-input Multiple-output) technology, WPA/WPA2-PSK, IEEE 802.1 X, WPS, network devices as: routers, switches, hubs, Powerline to Ethernet Adapters…