A half day seminar took place at the Malta Council for Science and Technology premises in Villa Bighi, Kalkara on the 17th February.

Beneficiaries of three projects presented their research findings on the occasion of the successful closure of these projects funded by MCST. These projects benefited from a national fund which is administered by the R & I Programmes Unit that supports Research and Innovation projects in Malta.

Since 2004, MCST has offered the Technology Development Programme to entities allowing them to access funds for research. To further instigate potential commercialisation of beneficiary ideas, MCST in 2013, launched the FUSION Commercialisation Voucher Programme which provides mentoring and financial support for studies on Intellectual Property, Market Research, Product Development Costing, Economic Impact Analysis, Risk Profile Assessment and others. Once projects have passed this stage, they may apply for the TDP.

The TDP provides opportunities for public and private entities to come together by forming a consortium, allowing knowledge transfer in both directions, being crucial to concretising research to deliver solutions to challenges faced not only within Science, but also within economic growth and competitive impact.

Parliamentary Secretary for Research, Innovation Youth and Sport, Chris Agius, congratulated all participants showcasing their projects and added that these projects, as well as commitments on ongoing projects, help towards Malta's target with the European Commission of reaching a 2 % GDP expenditure on Research and Development.

The projects presented at MCST have successfully achieved their promised deliverables and have made notable steps in advancing the various technologies they have researched.

Eye-Communicate

Eye- Communicate which was the first project presented, is a robust cost-effective eye-gazing technology for assisted communication. This is especially useful for people with disability, for the analysis of car drivers' fatigue levels, for diagnosis of medical conditions such as autism and schizophrenia and more. One of the reasons limiting the use of this technology is often its high cost.

The University of Malta, being the primary investigator of this project, designed a low-cost eye-gaze tracking system by capturing images using a webcam on-board a notebook computer. The system improves the gaze estimation accuracy by building on well-documented mathematical human eye models. This research also considered methods to handle any involuntary head and facial movements which are commonly exhibited by persons with movement disorders such as cerebral palsy.

The Curriculum Management, eLearning Department and also the Access to Communication & Technology Unit at the Ministry of Education and Employment were also part of this research project were they collaborated with the UoM to gather information on how children suffering from cerebral palsy react to a commercially available eye-gaze tracker under different conditions. This information would then help in the design of the low-cost eye gaze-tracker developed at the UoM.

ThermHCB

Galea Curmi Engineering Ltd, RA & Sons Manufacturing Ltd and the University of Malta have, through funding provided by the Malta Council for Science and Technology, designed a hollow concrete block called ThermHCB. This HCB has the same dimensions and load bearing characteristics as the conventional hollow concrete block but with a reduction in heat transfer by 21% and reduction in weight by 25%. Together with a newly designed rendering material, the heat transfer can be further reduced by 37%.

Two important advantages are offered: Improvement in building energy efficiency and the lighter weight without the need for any specialised tools or added training to the builders.

Analysis has also shown that the ThermHCB is more economically attractive than a conventional HCB.

The latest recast EU Directive 2010/31/EU on energy performance of buildings implies that all new and renovated buildings must become zero net-energy buildings by January 2021. This cannot be achieved by simply putting up renewable energy systems but by also making use of new materials that would reduce heat losses and gains from the building.

DigiMoCloud

The Digital Mobile Gaming Cloud (DigiMoCloud) project developed a service that allows gamers to play video games from their mobile phones and devices. The games actually run on powerful servers in remote data centres (the Cloud) and are the video is then streamed to the mobile devices.

The challenge in this project, through a consortium between the University of Malta and iMovo Ltd, was to compress the video such that it would not be too expensive to stream over the Internet and mobile connections. However, the video quality has to be high since mobile users, gamers in particular, have become accustomed to high quality mobile displays.

Another challenge is to keep the delay between the remote cloud servers and the mobile device low, because avid gamers will notice delays above one tenth of a second. In order to keep the delay this low, it is necessary to host the game servers close to the end-users. Thus, Maltese gamers will be best served with servers hosted in Malta. This allows a local company to compete with global

players who may not find it commercially attractive to launch such services from Maltese data centres.

MCST aims to carry on working on the promotion of Research and Innovation in the realm of Science and Technology and will continue showcasing such works to raise awareness amongst the public.

Currently, a call for the Commercialisation Voucher Programme is open more details can be accessed from the website http://www.mcst.gov.mt/R_A_I/OpenCall.aspx. The deadline was the 22nd February.