COHERENT

COHERENT is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the Special Session Communications & AI for Smart Energy Communities at NextGCom 2026. The conference will take place from 28-30 September 2026 in Kefalonia, Greece, bringing together researchers and practitioners working on next-generation communications, artificial intelligence, connected systems, and digital innovation.

The Special Session will place communications and AI research at the heart of the net-zero transition. It welcomes original work that connects advanced digital technologies with the operation, security, flexibility, and decarbonisation of smart energy communities. Contributions may address theory, methods, system design, experimental studies, prototypes, or real-world applications.

Topics of interest include:

• 6G and IoT connectivity for smart energy communities;
• federated learning and distributed intelligence;
• blockchain-enabled community energy trading;
• smart-grid operation, coordination, and flexibility;
• security, privacy, explainability, and trust; and
• digital twins, platforms, and experimental testbeds.

Submissions will receive full peer review. Accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings and submitted for inclusion in IEEE Xplore, subject to the publisher's scope and quality requirements. The Special Session provides an opportunity to connect communications research with COHERENT's work on community energy sharing, AI-enabled decision support, secure digital platforms, blockchain, and laboratory validation.

Important dates for this Special Session are:

• Paper submission: 1 August 2026;
• Notification: 14 August 2026; and
• Camera-ready paper: 24 August 2026.

Researchers working across communications, energy systems, AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, IoT, and sustainability are encouraged to submit and share the call with their networks. The session is organised under the COHERENT project through the Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme.

View the official Call for Special Session Papers and submission details

On 15 July 2026, a COHERENT-linked visit brought together University College Dublin (UCD) and the University of Ruhuna (UoR) at the Faculty of Engineering in Galle, Sri Lanka. The visit strengthened collaboration between two international COHERENT partners and created an opportunity to connect researchers, students, and academic teams working across communications, artificial intelligence, and sustainable digital technologies.

The programme included discussions with students and researchers whose academic journeys are closely connected to the visiting team, including Thulitha S. Chamara Sandeepa, Charuka Moremada, Pramitha Fernando, Pasika Ranaweera, Madhusanka Liyanage, and other colleagues. These exchanges highlighted the value of long-term mentoring, international mobility, and research networks in developing expertise across institutions and countries.

A research presentation introduced work from the Network Softwarization and Security Labs (NetsLab) on trustworthy artificial intelligence for sixth-generation mobile networks. The session considered how secure and explainable AI, network softwarization, privacy-aware learning, and resilient communications can support the emerging 6G ecosystem. Sri Lankan researchers have made important contributions to this work, demonstrating the strength of the shared UCD-UoR research community.

For COHERENT, the visit supports the project's wider objectives for explainable AI, secure digital platforms, interdisciplinary training, and international knowledge exchange. It also creates links between communications research and COHERENT's energy-system challenges, where trusted data, transparent decision support, and reliable digital infrastructure are essential for community energy management, low-carbon transitions, and inclusive participation.

The activity reflects the purpose of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme: enabling researchers to expand international networks, share methods and experience, and create opportunities for talented researchers to contribute to emerging interdisciplinary fields. COHERENT looks forward to building on the visit through continued UCD-UoR collaboration, future exchanges, and joint research across artificial intelligence, communications, energy, and sustainability.

COHERENT partners from the University of Birmingham (UoB) and the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (UNIZG FER) strengthened their collaboration during a project-linked visit to Zagreb in June 2026. The visit brought the project's whole-system energy research into direct conversation with researchers, businesses, public institutions, and policy stakeholders from Croatia and the United Kingdom.

Representing UoB and the Birmingham Energy Institute, Dr Weiqi Hua contributed to Green Energy Expo Zagreb, held on 9-10 June 2026. He presented perspectives on whole-system energy modelling and digital innovation for a reliable and affordable net-zero transition, and joined the panel on Data Centers and the Energy System. Discussions explored the rapid growth of electricity demand from digital infrastructure, the integration of renewable generation, system flexibility, multi-energy coordination, hydrogen, and the investment and policy conditions required for secure low-carbon development.

For COHERENT, the event provided an early opportunity to connect the project's technical programme with real implementation challenges. The exchanges highlighted how digitalisation, explainable decision support, community energy mechanisms, and place-based net-zero pathways can help energy systems accommodate new demand while remaining resilient, affordable, and inclusive.

During the visit, Dr Hua also met Prof Ninoslav Holjevac and colleagues at UNIZG FER. The partners discussed joint work on community hydrogen, emissions trading, renewable energy integration, multi-energy system modelling, and inclusive transition pathways. This meeting helped translate the COHERENT kick-off priorities into concrete collaboration between UoB and UNIZG, including research exchange, shared methods, and future staff secondments.

The visit was supported by the strong UK-Croatia innovation network surrounding the Green Energy Expo and the British Embassy Zagreb. COHERENT thanks the event organisers, participating institutions, and all colleagues from industry, government, and academia who contributed to the discussions. The project looks forward to building on these connections as its four-year international programme develops.

We are pleased to announce the launch of COHERENT. On 9 June 2026, the COHERENT consortium came together for the project kick-off meeting. The meeting marked the start of a 4-year international collaboration across 15 organisations from the UK, Europe, and global partner institutions.

The meeting established a common understanding of the project's objectives, governance, work-package responsibilities, reporting arrangements, data management, risk controls, communication processes, and practical planning for staff exchanges. Academic and non-academic partners reviewed how their complementary expertise will be connected across modelling, market design, experimental validation, policy, and stakeholder engagement.

COHERENT will support an inclusive net-zero transition through an integrated research programme covering:

• multi-vector energy system modelling and place-based transition pathways;
• community energy sharing, emissions trading, and hydrogen certification;
• carbon reduction, affordability, resilience, and distributional assessment;
• hardware-in-the-loop and laboratory validation of energy technologies and controls;
• policy, legal, regulatory, and market frameworks for inclusive implementation; and
• explainable AI and stakeholder-focused decision-support tools.

Partners also discussed the interfaces between the technical work packages. The whole-system models will provide scenarios and evidence for community market design; laboratory and real-time digital simulation will test operational feasibility; and socio-economic, policy, and stakeholder research will ensure that proposed solutions are transparent, trusted, and responsive to local needs.

Across the project, partners will carry out 186 person-months of staff exchanges. The kick-off meeting began the detailed planning of these secondments, including host capabilities, training objectives, knowledge-transfer activities, expected outputs, and the support required for researchers moving between academic and non-academic organisations. These exchanges will strengthen collaboration, share technical expertise, and build lasting research and innovation capacity across the consortium.

Immediate next steps include confirming the first exchange schedule, establishing project-wide data and communication procedures, refining shared case studies, and coordinating the initial modelling, market, validation, and stakeholder tasks. The consortium will use regular technical meetings and cross-work-package reviews to keep the research aligned and to identify opportunities for joint publications, demonstrations, training, and dissemination.

We thank all consortium partners, the project officer, and the research support teams for their contributions to a productive and well-structured kick-off meeting. We look forward to working together over the next four years to advance inclusive, low-carbon, and community-centred energy transitions.

COHERENT officially started in June 2026, launching a four-year Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska-Curie Staff Exchanges collaboration across universities, research teams, SMEs, and international partner institutions. The project brings together expertise in energy systems, hydrogen, emissions trading, digital technologies, experimental validation, policy, and community engagement.

Through coordinated research and 186 person-months of staff exchanges, partners will develop and test methods that connect whole-system modelling with community energy markets, hydrogen certification, carbon assessment, explainable AI, and inclusive policy design. Exchanges between academic and non-academic organisations will enable researchers to share facilities, data, methods, and practical implementation experience.

The programme is designed to produce both scientific advances and durable research capacity. COHERENT will support joint publications, open and reusable research outputs, training, stakeholder dialogue, and international collaboration, while keeping affordability, fairness, resilience, and community participation central to the transition to net zero.