Centre for Distance-spanning Technology, CDT, is a joint technological centre with partners from both industry and society, within Luleå University of Technology. It has also created new arenas for interdisciplinary research and integrated education to give impact to national competitiveness. One initiative hosted by CDT is Testbed Botnia that is  a Living Lab with the user in focus which pilot innovative services and concepts, as well as accommodate surveys cases for further take-up in Sweden.

What makes CDT unique is the close cooperation between the business community and Luleå University of Technology and a clear need-drive and innovation-drive approach. CDT works with Internet and mobility, solutions, scalable media and high quality Internet platform services. In Luleå, CDT has set up a test bed, Testbed Botnia, for future mobile services using several thousand test pilots for need finding and behavioural research. Energy-ICT is one of the prioritised areas with user driven innovation approach. Several successful companies have emerged, among them Effnet (IST Grand Prize 1999), Marratech (IST Prize winner 2000) and Operax.

CDTs mission is to generate sustainable business innovation.

In the SAVE-Energy project CDT is responsible for the Luleå pilot. Using their own cluster of SMEs CDT tries to bring in these as well as other major players such as local energy companies, research etc. to get the maximum effect of the project.

To read more about CDT, see their home page at http://www.cdt.ltu.se/ (will open in a new window).