Tag Archives: fbk

Two new joint projects with MIT

Fondazione Bruno Kessler, the research institute where I work, started two joint projects with MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, not bad!

1) Sustainable Connected House (http://mobile.mit.edu/en/sustainablehome), FBK-MIT Mobile Experience Lab alliance.
The MIT Mobile Experience Lab, within the Design Laboratory, signed a 3 years strategic alliance with the Fondazione Bruno Kessler on July of 2008. The alliance has been promoted by the Province of Trento, Italy. Our goal is to advanced research in sustainable connected homes, including subtopics of renewable energy systems, sustainable architecture, and also social sustainability and connected information system to optimize home behavior and peoples’ life. At the end of the project, we want to build a full-scale prototype of a sustainable home with new technologies, materials, and applications.

2) Green villages (http://mobile.mit.edu/en/zambana), Re-defining the sustainable green village of the future.
In partnership with Trentino Sviluppo division of the Provincia di Trento, Italy, we wanted to investigate how to transform the village of Zambana into a Sustainable Green Village. The main goal of the design workshop was to creatively redesign the village of Zambana, from an urban planning perspective, as well as from architectural and new media design perspectives. This exercise, more than giving specific directions for the implementation of the project, has opened a variety of ideas, scenarios and concepts that need to be further explored. In July 2008, the Design Lab and Mobile Experience Lab renewed our partnership with the Provincia di Trento and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler to continue the study for at least three more years.

Looking for a PhD student for a project on collective memory building.

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There is the opportunity for a 3-years PhD scholarship at the University of Trento working with my group on Web2.0 and social networking at FBK. The specific project that is funding the scholarship is about collective building of memory, roughly speaking, about how a community can share and build their collective memory (based on old stories, photos, videos, …) and how Web2.0 tools can support the process. The idea is to offer a contract for around 8 months with the research institute I work on and, if we like each other, to start the PhD.
If you are interested please send me an email: massa AT fbk DOT eu (if I don’t reply, it is because your email ended up in spam, please try to find other ways to contact me).

WebValley: young minds of Trentino for a summer of collaboration and investigation

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WebValley is the FBK-IRST summer school for dissemination of interdisciplinary scientific research. The selection is now open so, if you are a student, you can apply for WebValley 2008.
The WebValley formula is to create a team of enthusiast and motivated high school students (18 y) tutored by IRST researchers. The team accepts a challenge by a scientist collaborator from Ecology, Biology or Social Sciences, and develops in 3 weeks a new web-based prototype for data analysis and management. Also characteristic of the WebValley formula is that the project activities are developed mostly by group work, and that they are located in a high-tech lab but in a small size Alpine village, to show that web access may support new types of innovative actions also in the periphery. The project is run by about 20 students and 3 resident tutors, supported by junior researchers and expert programmers from IRST and other experts in the field.
I’ve the honour to be one of the tutors and I’m really looking forward for this experience.
This year, we accepted the challenge from OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and from June 23th to July 12th 2008 we will study how new Web technologies can be used in order to measure and pursue the progress of societies, with the goal of allowing people to make sense of social indicators and pushing a well-informed use of statistics in evaluation of public decisions. WebValley 2008 is a pilot project in the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. We look forward for the challenge and the opportunity!

Did I mention that the selection is now open and you can apply?

Below a video from a 2-days meeting we recently had at Centrale Fies, a terribly cool ex hydroelectric plant now used for events and performances, with all the past students (the project is ongoing since some years) but there are more videos. as well.