This week marked an exciting milestone for the ENSURE-6G project as we had the pleasure of conducting the very first secondment to Telefónica Barcelona, officially launching our series of inter-sectoral collaborations within the project. Accompanied by Dr. Bartłomiej Siniarski from University College Dublin (UCD), our main objective was to shape the research work plan that will guide joint efforts between Telefónica and several key partners in the months ahead.
Dr. Siniarski, who plays a coordinator role in WP6 and broader collaboration planning within ENSURE-6G, led discussions to define focus areas and workflows that will link Telefónica with research partners, including UCD, TCD, TUD, LIST, and UPORT. Together, we outlined how our complementary expertise can be leveraged for impactful research and meaningful technological advancements.
The scope of collaboration covers a range of cutting-edge topics aligned with the project’s mission to build secure, explainable, and sustainable AI systems for future 6G networks. Among the areas discussed were:
• Federated Learning for secure and energy-efficient telecom environments
• Synthetic attack generation using Generative AI
• Explainable and lightweight models for threat detection in ORAN-based edge networks
• Privacy-preserving techniques under real-world deployment constraints
These research directions contribute to ENSURE-6G’s ambition to bring trustworthy and scalable AI solutions into critical 6G use cases—including telemedicine, where privacy, performance, and interpretability are paramount.
The UCD team was impressed by the outstanding research infrastructure at Telefónica. During the lab tour, we explored a variety of powerful testbeds, including GPU model training servers, a fleet of end devices like NVIDIA Jetsons and Raspberry Pis, as well as VR systems and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) gear. These facilities will be instrumental for our collaborative work, particularly for immersive and health-related applications envisioned in the telemedicine use case.
The Telefónica research team were extremely welcoming and demonstrated deep technical and strategic insights, reinforcing the value of their contribution to ENSURE-6G. Their forward-thinking mindset and state-of-the-art labs make them a perfect partner for what lies ahead.
Finally, we’ve also set the stage for collaborative scientific output, identifying potential venues such as NDSS, IEEE ICC, GLOBECOM, and ACM MobiSys, where joint papers will be co-authored by multiple ENSURE-6G partners.
Looking forward to few more productive weeks and sharing progress as this exciting project continues to evolve.
