Unite! receives a boost from the European Commission with more funding for its deployment

he European Commission has announced the selected European universities alliances to receive funding from the Erasmus+ programme and continue with the full deployment of their projects. Unite! University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering, which was one of the first 17 European alliances selected in the first call in 2019 has received again the support of the EC to continue its path within the next four years.

This second funding phase will start in November 2022 and coincides with the addition to Unite! of two new partners: Graz University of Technology and Wrocław University of Science and Technology. The funding of €14.4 million is a clear acknowledgement from the European Commission that validates and reinforces the commitment of Unite! and all its partners to become a long-term strategic collaboration.

" I am very happy that Unite!’s transformative journey will be funded for four more years by the European Commission. We will continue our work as a European University Alliance with nine full partners. I would like to thank all colleagues for bringing Unite!’s vision to life with their commitment, their active engagement and outstanding enthusiasm. Unite! is our common success story! Let us shape the future of our alliance together and combine our diverse perspectives and expertise to bring about change for a sustainable and digital future.” said Tanja Brühl, President of Unite!

Over the past three years the alliance's working groups with more than 500 active members (faculty, staff, administration and students) have deployed the pilot phase. The new phase, which starts in November, builds on the work and projects already initiated and is inspired and guided by the alliance's new Mission Statement 2030, which was adopted this year and sets the way forward for the following years.

In the now granted proposal, Unite! makes explicit its will to be a model European university of innovation, technology and engineering that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals through a digital and green transition. To achieve it, the alliance will foster bottom-up community development and strengthen student participation and engagement in all its working groups.

Among the various projects that the alliance is working on, a more concrete output is to advance in the implementation of the European Degree and the development of a European Doctoral School around focus areas: Sustainable Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0 or Entrepreneurship.

In the new proposal the nine working groups, each led by one of the partner universities, will continue to build the umbrella for all these projects covering the areas of Management, Governance and Quality Assurance (TUDa); Digital Campus (TU Graz); Inclusion, Diversity and Well-being (ULisboa); Innovative Teaching and Learning (Aalto); Flexible Educational Provision (KTH); Professional Development and Training (Grenoble INP-UGA); PhD for Research, Innovation and Society (PoliTO); Open Innovation Community for Green Transition (Wroclaw Tech) and Strategic Outreach, Impact and Dissemination (UPC).

“Through this success, Unite! has been granted a great opportunity to have an impact on the transformation of the higher education landscape in Europe. Big challenges lie on the road ahead of us, which will require the enthusiasm and full commitment of all people involved -- students, staff and faculty: the diffusion of the Alliance culture in the Unite! partner universities, the support of the member states in general and of the Italian government in particular to move from the project mentality to a sustainable program approach, the synergistic development inside our Alliance of both the education and the research&innovation dimensions. We are now all very excited and looking forward to the forthcoming last Dialogue of the pilot phase of our alliance, 20-22sep in Torino, to start planning the future!” declares Professor Zanino, Key Liaison Officer di Unite! for Politecnico di Torino