The work carried out in Privacy&Us from its beginning to its end can be summarized as following:
In terms of project management: Privacy&Us hired thirteen ESRs within the planned time frame. All the ESRs were retained until the end of their recruitment period, with the exception of one ESR, who completed his doctoral education before the end of his recruitment period. All planned deliverables were submitted. Both the management board and the supervisory board met regularly during the project duration. The final meeting took place in October 2020.
In terms of training: five Privacy&Us training events were organized, the first in cooperation with the IFIP Summer School 2016. In the second event, the ESRs presented their PhD research proposals to an evaluation committee, which were revisited in all the following training events. In the training events, the ESRs took part in 19 interdisciplinary and professional training modules. Ten additional online training modules were offered to them. A final event was organized for the ESRs to present the results of PhD research work. All ESRs completed their secondments.
In terms of scientific results: ESRs authored peer-reviewed and accepted international publications in proceedings of well-acknowledged conferences and journal articles. The total number of scientific work authored or co-authored by ESRs adds up to 51 publications, where ten result from direct collaborations between the ESRs. Furthermore, five PhD theses have been published and successfully defended.
In terms of dissemination: the project website (
https://privacyus.eu(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) and a Twitter account (@privacyus_itn) were set up, and press releases were disseminated. The ESRs engaged in the participation in, and publication of technical reports and scientific papers at workshops, conferences, and journal articles. Concerning general audience publications, Privacy&Us appeared in newspaper articles, news websites and podcasts and ESRs published blog posts about their research. A public Git repository (
https://github.com/PrivacyUs(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) was set up for the distribution of open source code.
We have successfully trained all the thirteen ESRs to reason, design and develop innovative solutions to questions related to the protection of citizens' privacy and to convert their knowledge and ideas into products and services for economic and social benefit.
