Author: Monika Dolezalova

The International Forum on Advanced and digitalised Smart Textiles (IFAST) will take place online, on 15 and 16 June 2021, with the objective to evaluate the development of advanced smart textiles in the European defence sector, aiming at laying the foundation of a possible European future dual use programme for multifunctional smart textiles. The event is organised within a European Defence Agency (EDA) project, “Smart textiles in defence: looking at the soldiers of the future (STILE)”, targeting the reach of a proof of concept of a multifunctional smart textile model in defence. Due to its peculiarities, the STILE model is embedded within the dual use ecosystem, which is expected to get the attention of the EU industrial/research policy in the upcoming years. The event will gather relevant stakeholders coming from governmental defence bodies, industry (dual use), academia and R&T communities, as well as European institutions and organizations.

The IFAST forum is composed of an Exhibition Centre, where industries, academia and research organisations can have a free booth (virtual stand) to showcase their products, services and projects in the areas of smart/advanced/digitalised textiles, and a Conference Area, with the participation of distinguished speakers from several national and international institutions (e.g. PT and ES Ministry of Defence, European Commission). The conference is organised in the following panels:

• Panel 1. Foresight on advanced and digitalised smart textiles in the European defence sector. 
• Panel 2. Visualising a European dual use programme for multifunctional smart textiles.

The conference will take place on 15 June 2021, while the exhibition centre will be accessible on 15 June and the morning of 16 June 2021.

Participants are offered a free opportunity to provide an abstract and a poster, using the ad hoc templates that can be downloaded in the IFAST website (https://www.ifast-stile.eu/abstracts/).

The participation to the IFAST Exhibition area (15 June and morning of 16 June) will be based on the submission of an abstract describing the company products, services or projects.

Participants are also welcomed to ask for a place in the pitching session (that will take place in the morning of 16 June). Since the time slots for pitches are limited, the IFAST Organising Committee will make a selection on the basis of the abstracts submitted by the pitch applicants, based on their originality, technical quality and scientific merit. Participants requesting a virtual booth will get priority in the selection. Those participants, whose abstract will not be selected for the pitching session, will be offered to show a poster in a specific booth within the IFAST Exhibition area. Therefore, the exhibitors are kindly asked to submit also a poster, in case their abstract will not be selected for the pitching session. Participants can also submit only an abstract, without any other option.

All the abstracts received with the proper content and format presentation will be included in a book of abstracts related to the Conference and Exhibition areas, which will be published after the IFAST event (with ISBN). The deadline to submit the abstracts/posters is 1 June 2021.

Only abstracts/posters coming from registered exhibitors will be considered for the booths, pitch session and book of abstracts.

In addition, the participants can become partners of the IFAST exhibition centre, under the commitment to submit an abstract and to contribute to the dissemination of the event through their network. Partners are offered a free opportunity to get their logo published on the IFAST website.

Further information about the International Forum IFAST (e.g. programme, speakers) can be found on the website https://www.ifast-stile.eu. The registration is now open and can be made through the IFAST website at the link https://www.ifast-stile.eu/registration/

The deadline for IFAST registration is 1 June 2021.

The participants are kindly invited to use the contact form on the website in order to receive more information on the above-mentioned opportunities (e.g. booth, abstract/poster, pitch, partnership, registration) or sending an email directly to the functional mailbox info@ifast-stile.eu.

Can flexible and wearable technologies innovate your products and services? How to get technical, business and financial support for testing it?

On December 4, 2020, AMIRES organized a webinar in the framework of the SmartEEs2 project. This webinar was specifically aimed at informing companies in Central Europe about possibilities to participate in the open calls for Application Experiments.

Within SmartEEs2 five Calls for Application Experiments are opened inviting interested companies to submit their application experiment proposals. Selected Application Experiments will demonstrate the transfer of flexible and wearable electronics technologies into new products / series of products, processes, business models and business opportunities. The next, already third, Call for Application Experiments is open until the 15^th of January 2021.

At the workshop, participants were informed about the SmartEEs2 project and its objectives and how to submit a proposal in the Call for Application Experiments. The webinar also included two examples of companies that were supported through the first SmartEEs project.

Webinar presentations

Presentation title	Speaker
Introduction to the workshop	Michael ten Donkelaar, AMIRES
Introduction to SmartEEs2	Rudolf Fryček, AMIRES
Company testimonial 1 – ESYST	Jaroslav Sochor, ESYST, Czech Republic
Company testimonial 2 – IDEA	Gianluca Di Buo, IDEA, Italy
SmartEEs2 registration process	Minja Maric, AMIRES

Webinar recordings