The EMPYREAN consortium held its 8th Plenary Meeting on 29-30 September 2026 in Murcia, Spain, hosted by the University of Murcia (UMU). The meeting marked an important milestone for the project as EMPYREAN moves into its final stage, with the consortium focusing on bringing together the results developed throughout the project and preparing for the final demonstrations, evaluation, and exploitation activities. Over the two days, partners reviewed the progress of the project and discussed the activities required to successfully complete the remaining work. Particular attention was given to the finalisation of the demonstration scenarios, including the integration and preparation of the different components and technologies that will showcase the EMPYREAN vision in practice. The consortium also worked on the preparation of the evaluation activities, defining the remaining steps for assessing the project’s technical results and demonstrating the benefits of the EMPYREAN approach across the targeted use cases. Another important focus of the meeting was exploitation and sustainability. Partners discussed the final exploitation activities and how the project’s results, technologies and knowledge can be further developed and transferred beyond the project lifetime. The plenary meeting also provided an opportunity for the consortium to review the overall project progress, coordinate the remaining technical and management activities, and align efforts towards the project’s final milestones. With the project entering its final phase, EMPYREAN is now moving from development towards demonstration, evaluation and exploitation, bringing together the results of the project and preparing to showcase its contribution to the evolution of intelligent and autonomous computing across the Edge–Cloud continuum. EMPYREAN thanks the University of Murcia for hosting the 8th Plenary Meeting and all consortium partners for their continued collaboration and commitment as the project approaches its final milestones.

The University of Murcia (UMU) participated in the European Researchers’ Night 2026, presenting the EMPYREAN Project as part of its research and innovation activities. The European Researchers’ Night is a public outreach event that brings science, research and innovation closer to society, offering visitors the opportunity to learn about ongoing research through demonstrations, interactive activities and direct interaction with researchers. As part of UMU’s participation, EMPYREAN was presented to the public, providing an opportunity to introduce the project’s research and objectives beyond the scientific and technical community. The event helped communicate how European research projects such as EMPYREAN are addressing emerging challenges related to next-generation digital infrastructures, intelligent computing and the Edge-Cloud continuum. Public engagement activities such as the European Researchers’ Night play an important role in making research more accessible and in highlighting the impact of European research and innovation projects on future technologies and services.

EMPYREAN co-organised and actively participated in the 8th International Workshop on Cyber-Security in Software-defined and Virtualized Infrastructures (SecSoft), held on 3 July 2026 in Berlin, Germany, and co-located with the IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft 2026). SecSoft brought together researchers, industry experts and European research projects to discuss emerging cybersecurity challenges and solutions for software-defined, virtualised, cloud-edge and critical infrastructures. Through its participation, EMPYREAN contributed to the discussions on securing increasingly distributed and heterogeneous computing environments. The workshop provided an opportunity to present and discuss approaches for addressing cybersecurity across the Edge–Cloud continuum, where infrastructure, applications and services are dynamically distributed across multiple domains. A particular focus of the discussions was the need for security-aware management and orchestration in highly dynamic infrastructures. As computing resources and services become increasingly distributed, cybersecurity mechanisms need to operate across heterogeneous environments while supporting dynamic resource allocation, workload migration and autonomous decision-making. The workshop also gave EMPYREAN an opportunity to exchange experiences with researchers and practitioners working on related cybersecurity challenges and to explore synergies with other European research and innovation activities. EMPYREAN would like to thank the SecSoft organisers, the NetSoft community and all participants for the valuable discussions and the opportunity to contribute to this important topic.

EMPYREAN participated in the special session “Dynamic Intelligence and Connectivity in the Edge-Cloud Continuum”, held in conjunction with the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC 2026), which took place from 22–24 June 2026 in Porto, Portugal. The special session brought together research initiatives working on the evolution of intelligent, distributed and connected computing infrastructures, providing an opportunity to exchange approaches and discuss emerging challenges in the Edge-Cloud Continuum. As part of the session, EMPYREAN presented the joint work “Building the Association-Based Continuum: From Resource Isolation to Federation.” The contribution presented EMPYREAN’s approach to moving beyond isolated computing resources toward a more flexible, collaborative continuum, where resources distributed across heterogeneous edge and cloud infrastructures can be federated and dynamically coordinated. A key concept presented was the Association-Based Continuum, which enables groups of heterogeneous resources to be dynamically organised into Associations and supports collaboration and resource sharing across different infrastructure domains. This approach supports the EMPYREAN vision of a distributed and autonomous computing continuum capable of supporting dynamic applications and services across edge, fog, and cloud environments. The session also provided an opportunity to exchange ideas with other Horizon Europe research projects addressing distributed intelligence, connectivity, resource federation and the Cognitive Computing Continuum. These interactions help identify synergies between complementary research efforts and advance common approaches for future intelligent computing infrastructures. EMPYREAN would like to thank the organisers and all participants of ICE/ITMC 2026 for the valuable discussions and the opportunity to present and discuss the project’s research with the wider scientific community.

EMPYREAN participated in Data Week 2026, held on 5–6 May 2026 in Oslo, Norway, contributing to the workshop “From Data to Decisions: AI Lifecycle Management Across the Cognitive Computing Continuum.” The workshop brought together European research and innovation projects working on distributed AI, cognitive computing, and the Edge–Cloud continuum. The session, organised within the European Cognitive Computing Continuum community, focused on the challenges of managing the complete AI lifecycle across distributed and heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Discussions covered topics including AI pipeline orchestration, federated learning, MLOps and AIOps, distributed data management, monitoring, cybersecurity, trustworthiness, privacy and energy-efficient AI services. Representing EMPYREAN, Panagiotis Kokkinos (ICCS/NTUA) presented the project’s approach to adaptive orchestration frameworks, SDKs and distributed MLOps toolchains for operationalising AI services across heterogeneous edge-to-cloud environments. The presentation highlighted the challenges of dynamically scheduling and optimising AI workloads across infrastructures with different compute, latency and energy characteristics, while maintaining efficient operation and observability. The workshop brought together contributions from several Horizon Europe projects, including EMPYREAN, CoGNETs, ENACT, INTEND and Swarmchestrate, providing an opportunity to exchange knowledge and identify synergies around the development of the Cognitive Computing Continuum. The session also highlighted the complementary approaches being developed across the projects, ranging from decentralised coordination and swarm intelligence to adaptive orchestration, intent-driven infrastructure management and energy-aware optimisation. For EMPYREAN, the workshop provided an opportunity to further discuss how autonomous and adaptive orchestration can support AI applications across the Edge-Cloud continuum, and how heterogeneous resources can be coordinated to meet the dynamic requirements of next-generation applications and services. EMPYREAN thanks the organisers and participating projects for the valuable discussions and the opportunity to contribute to this exchange on the future of AI lifecycle management and cognitive computing infrastructures.

On 29–30 April, the EMPYREAN consortium successfully held its 7th Plenary Meeting in Athens, hosted by our partner NVIDIA. The meeting marked an important milestone for the project, following the successful completion of the main technical work packages and the strong progress achieved across the EMPYREAN platform. Partners reviewed the latest developments on the Association-based edge-cloud continuum, AI-driven orchestration, secure and distributed data management, workflow execution, telemetry, and service assurance mechanisms. With the core technical developments now largely completed, discussions focused on the final integration and stabilization of the platform, as well as on the design and preparation of the final demonstrations across the EMPYREAN use cases. The consortium also advanced the planning of exploitation activities and the analysis of the project’s overall impact and innovation potential. A big thank you to NVIDIA for hosting the meeting and to all partners for the productive discussions and continued collaboration.

EMPYREAN is pleased to announce the organization of the RISE Workshop – Resilient, Intelligent and Sustainable Edge-Cloud Systems, bringing together researchers and practitioners working on next-generation distributed computing infrastructures and services. The workshop will focus on emerging challenges and solutions in areas such as: Edge-cloud and IoT systems AI-driven orchestration and resource management Federated and distributed infrastructures Secure and trustworthy computing Data management and analytics across the continuum Sustainable and resilient cloud-native systems RISE aims to provide a forum for discussing innovative architectures, platforms, and operational models that enable intelligent and autonomous edge-cloud ecosystems. More information, including the call for papers, important dates, and submission details, is available at: https://rise-workshop.github.io We look forward to your participation and contributions!

EMPYREAN was recently showcased at BIEMH33 (Bienal Internacional de Máquina-Herramienta / International Machine-Tool Exhibition), 2-6 March at Bilbao Exhibition Center, one of the leading international trade fairs for advanced manufacturing, through the participation of our partner IDEKO. At IDEKO’s stand, the team presented the EMPYREAN project’s vision and key objectives, with a special focus on our industrial use case for near-real-time anomaly detection in robotic machining cells. Visitors had the opportunity to learn how EMPYREAN’s intelligent edge-cloud continuum supports reliable monitoring, low-latency analytics, and adaptive decision-making in demanding manufacturing environments. The presentation also highlighted the latest progress in integrating anomaly-detection mechanisms into the broader EMPYREAN architecture, demonstrating how advanced data analytics and distributed intelligence can improve operational efficiency and resilience in Industry 4.0 scenarios. We thank IDEKO for representing EMPYREAN at BIEMH33 and for helping increase the project’s visibility within the advanced manufacturing community.

EMPYREAN organizes a joint webinar bringing together leading Horizon Europe projects from the Cognitive Computing Continuum portfolio (COGNETS, EMPYREAN, ENACT, HYPER-AI, INTEND, MYRTUS, and SWARMCHESTRATE)  to showcase their most mature and market-relevant results. The webinar will be held online on Tuesday, 24 March from 10:00 to 11:30 CET. The webinar is designed to go beyond technical deep-dives and instead present advanced exploitable outcomes through a concise, impact-driven, and user-oriented narrative. The goal is to connect research innovation with industry adoption, collaboration opportunities, and long-term sustainability. Registration is particularly encouraged for: Industry stakeholders and technology adopters in AI, cloud, and edge computing SMEs and startups exploring next-generation digital infrastructures Researchers and innovation actors in distributed intelligence Public authorities and Digital Innovation Hubs European projects and ecosystem stakeholders   Register here:  Please make sure you reserve your seat by registering.

We are pleased to announce the release of the  6th EMPYREAN Newsletter (October 25 – January 26). It highlights the latest project achievements, technical developments, and upcoming activities within EMPYREAN. Explore the latest insights from our consortium and stay up to date on progress across our pilots, innovations, and platform developments. Read the newsletters now and follow our journey toward an advanced, collaborative IoT-edge-cloud continuum. EMPYREAN 6th Newsletter (October 25 – January 26)