Participants at the first meeting of the aUPaEU project at the Baix Llobregat Campus of the UPC
Participants at the first meeting of the aUPaEU project at the Baix Llobregat Campus of the UPC
19 January 2023
The UPC hosted the first meeting of the aUPaEU coordinators
Participants at the first meeting of the aUPaEU project at the Baix Llobregat Campus of the UPC
The kick-off meeting of the project "A University Partnership for Acceleration of EuropeanUniversities" (aUPaEU) is the first of its kind in bringing together two alliances Unite! and EPiCUR
Representatives of the Unite! and EPiCUR alliances and the European Commission met at the Unite! partner university of the UPC, in what has been the first meeting of the aUPaEU project promoted by the Unite! alliance. With the aim of designing and integrating acceleration services for European universities, the project is driven by two university alliances: Unite! and EPiCUR. The UPC will be the coordinating university of the project which has received 3.4 million euros in funding from the European Commission in the framework of the European Research Area call (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01) and its development is planned for five years.

The meeting took place on 12 and 13 January, participants included the project coordinator, UPC lecturer and researcher Jesús Alcober, and the lecturer at the Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO) and coordinator of the Unite!H2020 project, Roberto Zanino, as well as representatives of the working teams of the two alliances and the European Commission, who contextualized the project within the framework of the policies and strategies of the new European Research Area.

aUPaEU is based on the collaboration of five academic institutions that are part of two European university alliances. On the Unite! side, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, IThinkUPC, Grenoble INP - UGA Institut d'ingénierie et de management and Politecnico di Torino participate in the project. EPICUR is represented by Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology .

The aim of the collaboration is to integrate and implement acceleration services for higher education institutions (HEIs), networks, university alliances and their umbrella organizations. The project foresees the development of a platform acting as an agora of acceleration services for all European universities and connecting research and transfer services of universities (research infrastructures and resources, academia-entrepreneurship cooperation, human capital in research, open science...).