Also, a FORTH member participated as a panelist during the discussion session «Panel Synergies in collaborative projects on high-performance computing for extreme-scale big data analytics», along with representatives from the EU projects EVEREST and DAPHNE, as well as the BDVA. There, it was discussed potential collaborations between the three projects that were present at the event (MARVEL, EVEREST, and DAPHNE) and other projects that were represented under the auspices of BDVA. Apart from the organization of joint events/workshops and special issues in journals, it was agreed to establish more active collaborations, forming an Association of Projects for Big Data and Extreme Scale Analytics. This may include among others: i) exchange of experience, best-practices, and data, ii) experts from the projects acting as external evaluators or advisory board members for the other projects, iii) organization of Info Days in order to promote the results of all projects and the overall efforts in this field, and iv) establishment of a common declaration of this association in order to highlight our communal efforts in a European level.

A first mailing list of 6 representatives was created in order to undertake these tasks. The event was attended by around 30-40 experts (with almost 1/3 being women) in the fields of high-performance computing (HPC), Big Data, Extreme Scale Analytics, security and privacy, and smart cities management.