NEWS
The Department of Computing Science at Umea University will coordinate SOCRATES, a PhD training program for 15 young researchers, created to develop the field of Social Robotics with an application focus on Robotics in Eldercare.
The project officially starts Nov 1, 2016 and runs for 4 years. SOCRATES is an H2020 project (a Marie Skłodowska-Curie action) with a total financing of EUR 3.9 million. The research aims at robots that adapt to the humans, by varying the level of autonomy, or by perceiving human emotions and intentions.
To support the PhD students and their training, a consortium comprising seven top-level universities/research institutes, three industrial partners, two end-user oriented partners, and three business-oriented organisations has been formed. Umeå University acts as coordinator, with Thomas Hellström, Suna Bensch, and Lennart Edblom from Department of Computing Science as coordinating team. Another partner from Umeå, the incubator Uminova Innovation will support the PhD students in business development related to research.
The outcome of SOCRATES will be a new generation of researchers with the ability to interact with scholars from different ‘schools-of-thought’ in areas that are well within as well as outside of their areas of expertise.
Expected starting date for all positions is 1st of April 2017. Horizon 2020, which runs over the period from 2014-2020, has a total budget of almost EUR 75bn.
