As a first important milestone, all 12 ESRs have been successfully recruited, with great diversity in country of origin, type of university degree and background studies, age, research topic of interest, skills, etc. However, what is common about the ESRs is that they are all collaborative and value teamwork. This resulted in well-composed work package deliverables and disseminated scientific group efforts. In total there have been 80 papers accepted, based on the research of QoE-Net participants. As collaborations extend beyond the members of the project, more than half of these papers involved scientists from industry and academia who are not affiliated with QoE-Net. The diversity in research topic of interest enabled a wide area in the field of Quality of Experience (QoE) to be covered in the work performed, which is continuously getting published. These topics include QoE management in Software-Defined Networks, virtual quality probes, collaborative opportunities between Over-The-Top and Internet Service Providers, monitoring at user terminals, quality implications of light field display parameters, image reconstruction techniques, evaluation of quality during playback interruptions in streaming services, cognitive bias in subjective studies, user behaviour, quality switching, link quality estimation, gaming experience, preprocessing for video codecs, HDR visualization quality, immersive multimedia, digital storytelling etc. Beyond publications, 5 patents have been filed as well, based on the research performed in the scope of the project.
As the project itself is a training network, research training is a core element of the activities. First of all, ESRs have been trained through participation in tutorials and seminars. For this purpose, Online Short Courses are organized for the ESRs, which are coordinated by the ESRs themselves. A total of 17 of these courses have been delivered via an online video conferencing platform. The topics covered by these courses include standardization, perception, quality assessment, QoE-aware solutions, display technologies, video coding, usability, business aspects, etc. The expertise of the ESRs is also broadened by transferable skills training events. A total of 15 events have taken place in difference European countries. These events focused on the development of scientific paper writing skills and oral presentation skills – which are essential for the dissemination of research results – standardization, patenting, project proposal writing and business planning, seminars and a summer school on QoE modelling and management, training ESRs in interdisciplinary methods, and others.
