Planning the Future of Research & Innovation in the European University Alliance UNITE!

UNITE! is one of the first 17 European University Alliances.

Back in 2019, our 7 universities decided to take institutional cooperation to the next level by developing a long-term joint strategy for education addressing societal challenges offering inter-university ‘campus’ curricula where students, doctoral candidates, faculty and staff are mobile at all levels.Through this UNITE!H2020 project, our Alliance looks even further and takes up the challenge launched by the EC to develop, in synergy with its education dimension, a shared, integrated, long-term research and innovation (R&I) strategy, while developing, during the 3-year of the project, several pilot initiatives in the field of Energy - with special reference to the Green Deal - and Industry 4.0.UNITE! universities are highly ranked in their shared focus areas - STEM, architecture and design, and all belong to the CLUSTER university network, which boasts three decades of close cooperation among its members.

This gives us a position of strength in assuring tangible progress towards our institutional transformation and the identification of successful models for the modernization of R&I.

To do so, UNITE!H2020 will: a)develop a common R&I 2030 agenda, emphasizing our common DNA and shared vocation to address major societal challenges; b)develop policies to strengthen our R&I human capital by, e.g., new career development initiatives; c)develop policies to share our research infrastructures (RIs) supported by, e.g., experimental tests of previously developed guidelines on a selection of Energy RIs; d)reinforce cooperation with non-academic R&I players by, e.g., developing a network of Grant Offices & TTOs; e)mainstream our comprehensive Open Science practices based on, e.g., a detailed experimental analysis on the approach of our R&I groups to OS; f)involve citizens, civil society and public authorities in R&I; g)develop relations with other Alliances for joint synergies/complementarities.