Kick-off of the TRAIN4EU+ project

Funded by Horizon 2020 programme to support the research and innovation dimension of European University Alliances, the TRAIN4EU+ project will enable the 4EU+ Alliance to reach the ambition of transformation and intensive collaboration across all areas of the knowledge square that covers education, societal engagement, research and innovation.

The kick-off meeting marked the beginning of the TRAIN4EU+ project, with participation from university leaders from all six universities as well as work package leaders and work package coordinators joining two days of presentations, discussions and workshops.

TRAIN4EU+ has as an overall aim to identify new ways to improve and transform - individually and collectively – the support structures for enhancing quality and impact of R&I.

The success criteria is a catalogue of how to improve R&I support structures, and their planned future development, embedded in key deliverables such as expanding best practices and pilot implementations of new transformative modes of supporting research and innovation by end of the project period in 2023. An important part of the project is the dissemination, exploitation and communication of the project’s outcomes internally and externally to other European University alliances, national policymakers, business and civic society, and the European Commission, as well as broad dissemination to other universities through the consortium’s participation in the activities of international higher education organizations.

Vice-Rector Prof. Bente Stallknecht (University of Copenhagen) and member of the 4EU+ Management Committee bid welcome to the kick-off meeting with joy and enthusiasm for the project:

"When 4EU+ was founded, the explicit ambition for us as university leaders was that we wanted to try something new and take international university collaboration and co-creation to the next level. That is still the core ambition of 4EU+ and with the launch of TRAIN4EU+, I believe that we are one step closer.

In my opinion, next-level collaboration should be comprehensive, covering all missions of a university, to unlock synergies and true transformation of how we do things in our daily university business. With the TRAIN4EU+ project, synergies within R&I support will be unlocked and the potential of our alliance will unfold. TRAIN4EU+ will demonstrate that it is possible to leverage the potential of our collaboration much better by integrating research, innovation and service to society into our alliance.

My hope and expectations for the ambitious project are that the learnings and recommendations during the next years will contribute to our 4EU+ alliance vision of "supporting our researchers as they continue to expand the limits of knowledge and ensuring that this knowledge helps society address the challenges of our times". "

In her presentation, Prof. Lenka Rovna, Vice-Rector for European Affairs at Charles University and member of 4EU+ Management Committee stressed that historically, 4EU+ was founded as an Alliance of research-intensive Universities and the creation of Flagships and support for research projects show the importance of our research teams. TRAIN4EU+ means another step forward.

The five main work packages of the TRAIN4EU+ project are: WP1 Common Research Agenda (led by University of Milan) WP2 Strengthening R&I Human Capital (led by Charles University) WP3 Sharing Research Infrastructure (led by Heidelberg University) WP4 Linking Citizens-Academia-Business (led by Sorbonne University) WP5 Mainstreaming Open Science (led by University of Warsaw)