LIFTGATE aims at stimulating the full research potential by unlocking and developing existing or emerging excellence in the Galician Research and Development Center in Advanced Telecommunications (Gradiant), and helping to strengthen the capacities of its researchers to successfully participate in research activities at the Community level.Gradiant was founded in 2007 by 11 companies of the Galician ICT sector, the Regional Ministry of Industry of the Government of Galicia and the Galician universities of A Coruña, Vigo and Santiago de Compostela. Gradiant is a non-profit private foundation. The Center employs 45 researchers (as of Spring 2011) and its activity covers three ICT research areas: Communications; Networks and Applications; and Multimodal Information.Gradiant offers RTD services in the ICT field, covering a broad knowledge map of wireless networks, media security and distribution, cognitive radio, compressed sampling, embedded electronics, biometrics, etc. The center carries out research projects through direct contracts with industry, national and international public competitive programmes, and long-term agreements with companies for intellectual property transfer.Gradiant has designed LIFTGATE to improve its research capacities in the following specific ICT research topics: multimedia security, information processing and information systems security, and satellite communications.To achieve this goal, Gradiant will incorporate researchers with proven experience in those topics, as well as the necessary laboratory equipment. The technical capacities of Gradiant’s staff will be upgraded by organizing seminars and conferences in which top scientists will share cutting-edge knowledge on different ICT topics, and by implementing know-how exchange actions with European industrial and higher education institutions that are European leaders in ICT research: the Computer Vision and Multimedia Laboratory of theUniversity of Genève (Switzerland), the Università degli Studi di Siena (Italy), the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (Luxembourg), Telecom Bretagne (France), the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (Germany), and Technicolor (France).LIFTGATE will also also improve Gradiant’s competence in intellectual property issues and other skills that are complementary to the pure research activity. LIFTGATE will boost Gradiant’s business competence and, ultimately, will contribute to the prosperity and development of the Galician region by driving its economy to a knowledge-based era supported by technological development and innovation for the ICT sector.