The expected funding period of the 3DLife project is 3.5 years (or 42 months) during which solid foundations for long-term cooperation and a VCE are expected to emerge. These targets will ensure the lasting impact of the project.

Accordingly, the work programme is structured into four Joint Programmes of work each of which consists of one or more Work Packages (as shown in the figure below):

• Joint Programme on Management and Auditing (JMA).
• Joint Programme on Integration and Sustainability (JIS).
• Joint Programme on Cooperative Research (JCR).
• Joint Programme on Spreading Excellence (JSE).

Joint Programmes of Work

Joint Program on Management and Quality Assurance. The management activities are designed to guarantee that the project runs smoothly by ensuring that the goals are clearly defined and understood. The management organization of the Network consists of three interconnected entities: the Management Centre, the Network Steering Board (NSB) and the VCE Task Force.

Joint Program on Integration and Sustainability. The 3DLife project will build on existing relationships within the partnership where they exist and will forge new interdisciplinary relationships where previously there have been none. More importantly, however, is the fact that over its lifetime the 3DLife Network of Excellence will also reach out to the wider academic and industrial community and initiate new collaborations with partners not currently members of 3DLife. This is considered a crucial aspect of the work plan given the network’s ambitious and far-reaching technical vision and objectives.

Joint Program on Cooperative Research. The project’s joint research activities focus on collaborative research and development on media acquisition, analysis, its processing and adaptation for delivery using Internet technology. Underpinning technical integration of technologies provided by partners is the creation of an open and expandable framework for collaborative research on media interactive communication over the Internet. This framework will be based on a distributed repository of software tools.

Joint Program on Spreading Excellence. 3DLife plans to spread excellence in training, dissemination, and technology transfer. Spreading excellence of the scientific results and integrative efforts will target mainly three groups of people: academics, industry/businessmen and the non-specialist citizen.