Privacy Policy

Who we are

E-SPF DIGIT is an EU-funded project (101157922) that began in 01/10/2024 and ends in 30/09/2027.) For further information, we can be contacted at: info@e-spfdigit.eu

Scope of this privacy policy

The E-SPF Digit consortium has implemented this privacy policy to inform website visitors, our partners, and other stakeholders about how we process personal data. We are committed to processing personal data responsibly, securely, and proportionally throughout our activities in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016/679 [1].

How we collect your personal data

We collect personal data both directly and indirectly from individuals.

Directly:
o We obtain personal data directly from individuals when you subscribe to our newsletter
Indirectly:
o We obtain personal data directly from individuals when you send a message through the contact form available on the website

The personal data types we collect

We collect the following types of personal data about individuals, including:

General personal data types, such as: 

Contact details and professional affiliation (e.g., email when you sign up for our newsletter, or when we invite you to our Network, pilot activities, workshops, or conferences).  
Anonymised information (e.g., country of residence, web visitor profile) that is collected for research purposes to understand who is accessing the E-SPFdigit website and what content they are engaging with and opinion/feedback data from surveys).

We may collect special category personal data types, such as:

Your status as part of a vulnerable group (e.g., when we gather feedback from members of the public during our pilots).

The lawful bases for processing personal data 

During the E-SPF DIGIT research project, each of the partners will act as the data controller and therefore will be responsible for the implementation of data protection rules in relation to the processing operations it will perform. E-SPF DIGIT partners will be considered as joint controllers when they jointly determine the purposes and means, or at least the essential elements of these purposes and means, for data processing operations that will be performed within the E-SPF DIGIT project. For the personal data processed by any partner in the E-SPF DIGIT consortium, the applicable legislation is the GDPR. 

There are different bases on which the consortium processes personal data. E-SPF DIGIT expects to process personal data on the following legal basis:

Consent – When you provide us with your personal data directly, for example, when you subscribe to our newsletter or agree to participate in a survey or workshop [2]. 
Legitimate interests – We process personal data when it is necessary for us to achieve the following legitimate interests [3]: 
o Enhancing our research delivery; and
o Undertaking dissemination activities
Legal obligations– We may process personal data in order to meet a legal obligation [4], e.g., reporting to the European Commission and promoting project results to multiple audiences, including the media and the public.

What we do with personal data

The E-SPFdigit consortium processes personal data from our website with the purpose of: 

Promoting our research to different types of stakeholders
Processing online requests or queries, including responding to communications from individuals
Complying with legal and regularity obligations.

The E-SPFdigit consortium processes personal data gathered within the project for the purpose of: 

Organising project workshops, pilots, and conferences
Gathering stakeholders’ feedback on E-SPF DIGIT activities.

How we secure your personal data when we process it

We have put technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including, if necessary, sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. We aim to ensure that access to your personal data is password protected. Data is restricted only to a limited number of individuals who need to access it. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. We install and regularly update all security and anti-virus software in use on all our systems, nevertheless the security of data transmitted over the internet cannot be completely guaranteed. In addition, the consortium conducts ethical and data protection monitoring over the duration of the project, wherein the consortium will identify and assess any ethical or data protection risks and find solutions to overcome any such risks.

Please be aware that transmissions over the Internet are never completely private or secure.

Do we share personal data with third parties?

The E-SPFdigit consortium will generally not share personal information with anyone except the European Commission, if it so requests. All partners will treat information received from other partners as confidential and will not disclose it to third parties, unless it is obvious that the information is already publicly available or there is a legal obligation to do so. The partners will impose the same obligations on their employees and suppliers.

We may occasionally share personal data with trusted third parties, such as those listed below, to help us deliver efficient and quality services. When we do so, we ensure that recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data we entrust to them before we actually share the data. We may engage with several or all of the following categories of recipients:

Parties that support us as we provide our services (e.g., cloud-based software services such as Dropbox, Microsoft Sharepoint, Matomo Analytics)
Our professional advisers, including lawyers, auditors and insurers
Payment services providers
Marketing services providers (e.g. Mailchimp)
Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies (e.g., tax authorities) or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with applicable law or regulation
The European Commission when we are required by them to do so in relation to our work with them on EC-funded Horizon Europe projects.

Do we transfer your personal data outside the EU?

We store personal data on servers located in the EU, but also in the EEA (Portugal), where partners are based. We also transfer personal data to reputable third-party service providers, notably Google Drive, Dropbox, and EU Survey, some of which may also be located outside of the EU.  

Google Analytics stores all anonymised web analytics on the E-SPFdigit servers, based in the EU.  

All project partners are required to safeguard personal data in accordance with our contractual obligations and data protection legislation. 

Do we use cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer in order to make websites work better and to provide information to the owners of the website about its use by visitors. We only use third-party cookies on our website.

Where cookies are used, a statement will be sent to your browser explaining the use of cookies. To learn more, please refer to our cookie policy. We give visitors the option of not having cookies from our website.

Your data protection rights 

You have the following rights regarding our processing of your personal data. You can exercise your rights by emailing us (see below) including:

Right to withdraw consent – You can withdraw consent that you have previously given to one or more specified purposes to process your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.
Right of access – You can ask us to verify whether we are processing personal data about you and if so, to have access to a copy of such data.
Right to rectification and erasure – You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you or ask us to erase your personal data after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no longer need it for the purpose it was originally collected.
Right to restriction of processing – You can ask us to temporarily restrict our processing of your personal data if you contest the accuracy of your personal data, prefer to restrict its use rather than having us erase it, or need us to preserve it for you to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim. A temporary restriction may apply while verifying whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to process it. You can ask us to inform you before we lift that temporary processing restriction.
Right to data portability – In some circumstances, where you have provided personal data to us, you can ask us to transmit that personal data (in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format) directly to another company.
Right to object – You can object to our use of your personal data for direct marketing purposes, including profiling or where processing has taken the form of automated decision-making. However, we may need to keep some minimal information (e.g., e-mail address) to comply with your request to cease marketing to you.
Right to make a complaint to your local Data Protection Authority (DPA) (see https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm) regarding any concerns you may have about our data handling practices.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information or to exercise any of your other rights. This helps us to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. No fee is required to make an initial request unless your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Depending on the circumstances, we may be unable to comply with your request based on other lawful grounds.

How long do we retain personal data?

We retain personal data to provide our services, stay in contact with you and to comply with applicable laws, regulations and professional obligations to which we are subject. Please note that we have an obligation to retain data concerning European Union research projects (Horizon Europe) for up to five years after the end of the project (unless further retention is requested by auditors).

As the records and documentation containing personal data have been collected within the delivery of an EC project, we expect that the Commission will process it in compliance with Regulation No 2018/1725. After the expiry of the retention period, and unless further legitimate grounds for retention arise, we will dispose of personal data in a secure manner.

Do we change this privacy policy?

We regularly review this privacy policy and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This privacy policy was last updated on 03/03/2025.

Contact us

If you have any concerns as to how your data is processed or if you have some issues or queries concerning the E-SPFdigit website, you can contact us at:  info@e-spfdigit.eu

[1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).

[2] Article 6.1.a of GDPR states that processing is lawful if the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data, for one or more specific purposes. Article 9.2.a of the GDPR further states that processing of special categories of personal data is lawful if the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing for one or more specified purposes.

[3] Article 6.1.f of GDPR states that processing is lawful if it is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject.

[4] Article 6.1.c of GDPR states that processing is lawful if it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject. Article 38.1 of the project’s Grant Agreement between the European Commission and the project states that beneficiaries of Horizon Europe projects have an obligation to promote the project and its results.

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Main Goals

Sustainability Analysis

Systemic analysis to enhance sustainability, food resilience, and safety;

AI Digital Tools

Deploy and scale portable, AI-driven onsite digital tools;

Remote Sensing & Robots

Scale remote sensing and robotized tools for onsite monitoring;

Soil Management

Field-test and optimize digital tools for better soil management;

Digital Innovation Testing

Demonstrate and validate digital innovations in real settings;

Open Science & Innovation

Foster open science and innovation through a multi-actor approach with EC/REA & EUSO.

Universidade de Coimbra (UC)

Coordination and management of the project - The advanced therapies group was created in January 2008 at CNC and aims at generating fundamental and translational knowledge in the intersection of biomaterials with stem cells.

The research group has two main avenues of research:

Disease/ageing modeling and drug screening program
Regenerative medicine, particularly focused in regeneration mediated by controlled delivery of drugs.

The research group uses many tools to accomplish this goal, including the design of new biomaterials with relevant biological information, molecular and cell biology, microfluidic systems, high content analysis, and animal experimentation. Nanomedicine platforms to modulate the activity of stem cells and their progenies. The development of a wide spectrum of nanotechnologies (referred as Nanomedicine by National Institutes of Health for applications in the biomedical area) during the last years are very promising for the study of stem cell biology and to control exogenous and endogenous stem cells for regenerative medicine. The group is particularly interested to use these tools to induce in vivo stem cell differentiation and to mobilize stem cells from their niches to treat cardiovascular diseases. For this purpose, they are developing nanomaterials that release efficiently biomolecules (small molecules, proteins or non-coding RNAs) to manipulate stem cells or their progenies.

LEARN MORE

Meet the Researchers

Dr. Lino Ferreira

Coordinator of REGENERAR Project

Dr. Lino Ferreira is Coordinator Researcher at Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal and vice-director of Associate Laboratory CIBB, the largest biomedical research lab in the center region of Portugal. His research is focus on the development of bioengineering tools to promote regeneration and reset ageing in the cardiovascular system. He holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He did postdoctoral work at INEB (Portugal) and MIT (USA) in the areas of stem cells and nanotechnologies. He established his research group in 2008 at the University of Coimbra. In 2012, he was awarded with a prestigious European Research Council starting grant and in 2016 a prestigious ERA Chair position at the University of Coimbra. Outside the coordination of REGENEAR project, he likes to read, listen Jazz, watch tennis and run for pleasure.

Get to know

Anna Anjo-Stefanidis

MSc

Anna Anjo-Stefanidis completed her BSc in Biology with a specialization in Biomedical Science at York University in Toronto, Canada in 2022, followed by the completion of her Master’s degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Coimbra in 2024. Anna’s focus has been on the development and delivery of polymeric nanoformulations to target cells for the purpose of cellular reprogramming and gene editing. Outside the lab, Anna’s interests include outdoor activities, reading, and spending time with family and friends.

Get to know

Artur Rodrigues

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Phd

Artur Filipe Rodrigues earned his PhD in Nanoscience from the University of Manchester (UK) in 2019, following his MSc in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Aveiro (Portugal) in 2014. He joined the group of Dr Lino Ferreira as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019, where he has developed nanoformulations for the delivery of biologics, including enzymes and mRNA, for gene editing in the brain and skin. Filipe is interested in exploring the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials to tailor their pharmacological properties for precise in vivo delivery. Outside the lab, Filipe enjoys playing the guitar, watching series, and listening to podcasts, in addition to spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Get to know

Filipe Brás

MSc

Filipe Brás obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry in 2021 and a Master’s degree in Clinical Biochemistry in 2023, both from the University of Aveiro (Portugal). During these two academic experiences, Filipe had the opportunity to engage with a range of research areas, including nanomedicine (for cancer treatment), molecular pathology and proteomics. Since April 2024, Filipe has been a research fellow dedicated to the REGENERAR project, under the supervision of Dr Lino Ferreira and Dr Filipe Rodrigues. His current research activities are focused on the synthesis and modification of nanoparticles for brain cell reprogramming. Outside of science, he enjoys spending time with friends and family, working out at the gym, watching movies/series, documentaries and travelling.

Get to know

Luís Estronca

Senior Researcher

Phd

Luís Estronca has a Bachelor in Biochemistry from the University of Algarve and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Coimbra (Portugal). After completing his PhD he did his 1st post-doc in Cell Biology to unravel the initial mechanism of atherosclerosis using macrophages and a oxidized lipoprotein model. In his 2nd post-doc, in Stem Cells and Nanomaterials, he joined Lino Ferreira’s group and worked with human iPSC to differentiate into smooth muscle and endothelial cells to develop in vitro vascular platforms for in vitro screenings. In the last years he has been worked as lab and project manager of an ERA Chair European project and more recently of a Twinning European project, both in the thematic of ageing. Outside the lab, he regularly practices swimming and football, he also is actively involved in basketball, as team director, and volleyball as being the sports that his son and daughter play. He enjoys spending time with friends and family.

Get to know

Joana Brito

MSc

Phd Student

With a background in Biochemistry, Joana Brito completed her Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology in 2023 and a postgraduate course in Biomedical Research in 2024, both at the University of Coimbra. She is pursuing her PhD in Health Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, focusing on the dissection of the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular reprogramming with spatial resolution in brain organotypic cultures. Outside the lab, Joana has been involved in volleyball since childhood, first as an athlete and now as a coach and referee. In her spare time, she enjoys playing music, watching movies, and spending time with her dogs, Kate and Harry. She also loves to travel and spend time with her family.

Get to know