We hired the ERA Chair holder in M16, while the first three PhD researchers and the grant proposal writing and project management specialist were hired shortly after the start of the 2nd reporting period. At the same time, we hired a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student with the support of the Ministry of Science and Education. Later, we recruited a few more researchers so that the team became fully operational and could carry out the research work envisaged in the ERA Chair holder's strategy. We have already published a significant number of papers (11 published and 9 submitted papers), and with the 5 new researchers we have recently recruited, we expect a substantial increase in high-impact research outputs and corresponding publications by the end of the project.
To ensure the sustainability of the research activities beyond the project duration, we have organized a training course on research grant application and project management for the members of AIFORS, LAMOR and the Research Support Center of UNIZG-FER. We also submitted 13 new project proposals.
We sent several of our members abroad for short-term study visits (3-5 days), one PhD student for a 6-month research visit and one for a 3-month internship. The ERA Chair also spent a month as a visiting professor at the University of Basilicata in Potenza, Italy. We also organized five incoming mobilities, two of which resulted in joint conference publications.
We purchased a new server with graphics processors to be used exclusively by the members of the ERA Chair for training deep neural networks and secured free access to the necessary equipment and infrastructure as well as to UNIZG-FER and some partner institutions.
We also made an important contribution to the optimization of HR and equality policies at UNIZG-FER by organizing the creation of documents that will form the basis for UNIZG-FER's application for the "HR Excellence in Research Award". We organized a workshop to share our findings with UNIZG-FER employees.
An important contribution is also the creation of a new unit for grant proposal preparation and project management at UNIZG-FER, led by the specialist recruited by AIFROS, which has already supported the preparation of 17 major project proposals.
We have organized/attended many national and international dissemination events, but here we mention only the two most important events that we have established as annual events. The first is the AIFORS Colloquia on Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a series of small, invitation-only, face-to-face group meetings that focus on a small number of important research questions in the field of AI and robotics. The second event is the AIFORS Workshops on Industry–Academia Collaboration, a half-day event with panel discussions on innovation topics in the field of intelligent robotics. We also organized two training courses to strengthen the ability of our researchers to disseminate, communicate and exploit research results.
