The 1st meeting of the Advisory Board (AB) for the EU FP7 REGPOT project 'Fostering Innovation Based Research for e-Montenegro' (Fore-Mont), took place from August 26th, 2013 to August 28th, 2013, at the University of Montenegro, Rectorate Building. The meeting marked the official start of the Fore-Mont project Coordination and support action (Support Actions) within the function of Capacity Work Program and of the REGPOT-2012-2013-1, coordinated by the University of Montenegro (UoM), Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE). Fore-Mont is FP7 project funded by the European Commission with the total budget of the 3-year project 1 463 611 euros. The Fore-Mont project will rely on 5 partners from 5 different countries all over EU (Centre for TeleInFrastruktur - Denmark, Institut Jožef Stefan, Department of Communication Systems - Slovenia, Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology - Belgium, Ericsson Nikola Tesla - Croatia, CEA-Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology - France), and will be supported by 8 entities, from state authorities to SMEs, industries or regional organizations (Ministry of Science, Ministry of Information Society and Telecommunications, Crnogorski Telekom, Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services, ?ikom Ltd, Chamber of Economy of Montenegro, Innovation Academy - Greece, Centre for eGovernance Development for South East Europe - Slovenia).

Fore-Mont aims at strengthening the UoM (FEE)'s excellence by improving its research infrastructure, human resources fostering and long-term partnerships. The project will create a strong synergy in research from the three current UoM (FEE) research groups working in the field of ICT (telecommunications, signal processing and multimedia systems). Indeed, through Fore-Mont, these groups will merge to provide a research centre dedicated to the innovative research in info-communication infrastructures and e-services engineering: Research Centre for Info-Communication Technologies. In that manner, the Fore-Mont project will not only strengthen and develop the UoM (FEE) research performance in the area of info-communication technologies, but also prepare the UoM (FEE)'s full integration in ERA.

Measurable objectives of the project are the acquisition of important pieces of equipment; the implementation of a new centre dedicated to joint research; the hiring of experienced researchers (one dedicated to the Intellectual Property development plan); intense mobility trainings; international and regional conferences, workshops, scientific and industrial events to promote the project steps and results. Through these measures the new centre will be recognized as the leading research entity in the country for the ICT, when it comes to the advanced solutions for info-communication infrastructures, smart applications and e-services, as well as internationally recognized reliable partner. This project will support UoM(FEE) to integrate into ERA, becoming the major actor in ICT innovative research at national/regional level and a competent partner for Horizon2020 projects. Finally, the UoM(FEE) will create opportunities to be granted patents and to provide applied solutions and products in different domains which will reach expectations and demands of e-Montenegro development.

The first day of the meeting was organized as the official opening event of the project (kick-off). Apart from the whole UoM (FEE) project team and the EU partnering institutions, the EC project Officer, the UoM Rector with his team, representatives of supporting institutions from Montenegro and colleagues from other UoM departments, participated in the opening event. It has been widely covered and reported in national printed and electronic media.

The kick-off event was followed by a two-day working meeting of the Fore-Mont Advisory Board. Main lines of action per working packages were discussed and the project Action Plan was adopted. The AB members together with all WP leaders concluded their work with the separate meeting on the UoM (FEE) future research platform in ICT.