2020 year in review: The CLASS highlights

With the new year kicking off, we often tend to look at the big events of the year that just passed. As 2020 has been a challenging time for all, identifying what went well may help us look at the future with more optimism. Following this practice, we gathered the 2020 highlights of our project CLASS. Have a look at our most important activities from the previous year:

• In January, we organised a workshop as part of the HiPEAC 2020 Conference in Bologna (when physical events were still possible!). The workshop focused on real-time embedded systems, with the particular emphasis being on the distributed and parallel aspects.
• In July, the CLASS technology was selected by the EC Innovation Radar among the most highly innovative EU projects. Only innovations that are showing multiple signals of market creation potential are assigned a value under this indicator system and we are proud CLASS is among them.
• In November, we took part in Smart City Live 2020, the key event in the field of smart cities and urban spaces. CLASS along with the European project ELASTIC were selected by the Generalitat de Catalunya as joint participants in the novel Tomorrow.Radar online platform set up by the event organisers.
• Talking of events, CLASS also participated in several smart city activities organised in Italy, including the Motor Valley Fest 2020, the Modena Smart Life 2020, the Genova Smart Week 2020, and a webinar on Autonomous Driving. It was challenging but also exciting to adapt to the digital format of these events with online demos, videos, and presentations.
• Finally, our visibility in the press was elevated throughout the year, as news pieces about CLASS were published in media channels in the automotive and smart mobility fields, including magazines such as Cities Today and Automotive World. EU Cordis also published a dedicated article on our project.

Despite the challenges that 2020 brought, being flexible and adaptive to the new normalities made it work for the CLASS partners, who are looking forward to the final phase of the project. Stay tuned for the 2021 CLASS updates!