ELBA – Establishment of Training a nd Research Centers a nd Courses development on Intelligent Bigdata Analysis in CA

On February 27-28, 2020, the kick-off meeting on the ELBA project was held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The representatives of all partner-universities took an active part in it. The consortium includes 4 universities of Europe, 4 universities of Uzbekistan, 2 universities of Kazakhstan, 2 universities of Kyrgyzstan and 2 universities of Tajikistan.

An introduction and warm welcome was given by the Vice-Rector for Students and Internationalization, Prof. Víctor Arce and the Head of Section Mobility, Cooperation and Agreements, Ms. Anne Forryan. Following the welcome speech, Ms. Forryan conducted an institutional presentation in relation to ELBA objectives explaining the USC cooperation projects strategy.

Then, all partner-universities representatives presented their Home Institutions referring to ELBA objectives and explaining their contributions to the implementation of the project and their expectations from its results.

During the kick-off meeting such very important for the fulfillment of project issues were discussed. They are:

1. a presentation on Elba Project overview from ETSE perspective;
2. the introduction of the program on BigData Analytics in USC, organization of programmes; the USC’s Master programme on Big Data Analytics, their peculiarities;
3. a presentation in relation to Central Asia perspectives on Elba Project with specific references to WP1;
4. approval of ELBA logo;
5. financial issues of the project;
6. the programs for conducting the trainings on Data Science;
7. the work of the consortium on Quality Plan and Dissemination.

The members of the project meeting were greeted by the Rector of USC Prof. Dr. Juan Viaño

All members of International office and professors of the University of Santiago de Compostela including Ms. Anne Forryan, Sami Ashour, Natalya Solomatina, David Enrique Losada Carril, Paula López Martínez and Tomás Fernández Pena did their best for the meeting to be effective, organized a very warm welcome for the participants, took care of the food and comfortable stay of the delegations at the university. All member-universities expressed their deep thanks to the representatives of USC.

In general, the kick-off meeting provided an excellent opportunity to get together all the members, get to know each other in person, get acquainted with the history and current situation of partner universities, discuss important aspects of the project and outline immediate plans for