ALCHIMIA Engages with European Digital Innovation Hubs at AI-on-Demand Launch Event

Jul 3, 2025 | news

On 20 May 2025, the ALCHIMIA project joined innovators, researchers, and industry stakeholders in Valencia for the official launch of the new AI-on-Demand (AIoD) Platform, Europe’s central hub for collaborative artificial intelligence development. The event, titled “AI-on-Demand: Empowering AI Research & Innovation”, served as an interactive showcase of the platform’s capabilities and its role in advancing AI adoption across Europe.

The workshop gathered high-level speakers and participants, including representatives from European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) such as Susane Kuehrer (EIT Digital), Oscar Valle (INNDIH), and Barry O’Sullivan (ENTIRE), who joined the roundtable on “The Role of eDIHs and INNDIH in AI Adoption.” These discussions underlined the pivotal role of EDIHs in bridging the gap between AI research and practical deployment, especially in industrial contexts.

Representing the ALCHIMIA project, Anna Brékine took part in the panel “AI in Practice: Unlocking European Innovation through AIoD Platform,” highlighting how ALCHIMIA contributes to the AI ecosystem through innovative and scalable solutions for the manufacturing sector. The roundtable featured a dynamic exchange between several EU-funded research projects actively contributing to the AI-on-Demand ecosystem, including DATAMITE (represented by Jordi Arjona) and HIVEMIND (represented by Santiago Masse). The ALCHIMIA presentation focused on three key pillars of the project:

  • Federated Learning Framework: A robust, privacy-preserving AI system designed to enable distributed model training across different industrial sites without compromising sensitive data. The framework integrates continual learning and transfer learning capabilities, ensuring adaptability and cross-site knowledge sharing in real-time industrial contexts.
  • Optimization Framework: A decision-support system for Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) and Ladle Furnace (LF) processes, providing actionable guidance to operators on scrap selection, energy input, and additive use. This helps enhance steel quality while reducing environmental and operational costs.
  • Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A comprehensive evaluation of the environmental footprint of AI tools in industry, enabling the identification of sustainability gains and aligning with EU green objectives.

ALCHIMIA also shared its vision for contributing services, datasets, and AI models to the AIoD platform. Discussions touched upon the importance of open innovation, the anonymization of industrial data, and potential synergies with the EDIH network to promote the practical adoption of these tools by SMEs and large enterprises alike.

This event marked an important milestone for ALCHIMIA’s outreach and exploitation strategy. By engaging with EDIHs and the broader AI research community, the project strengthens its position as a catalyst for digital transformation in the metallurgy sector, aligned with Europe’s ambitions for trustworthy, high-impact AI.