Category: Featured article

The second 2019 Steering Committee of CLUSTER and was held at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven from 24th to 25th October.

Prior to the CLUSTER Steering Committee, addional working group meetings were organized, like the Student Representative Meeting on the 24th October, the InComm Project Meeting from 22th to 23th October and the Task Force Mobility Meeting on the 24th October.

The Consortium was hosting students from all member universities at an CLUSTER Students’ meeting, to hear student views, exchange ideas about new CLUSTER initiatives and discuss the future organisational structure of a CLUSTER Students’ organization.

Moreover, the 10th Workshop of Sino-European Engineering Education Platform (SEEEP) was held held at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven as well from 22th to 23th October. The topics of the Workshop were: “Engineering Education: best practices and lessons learned”, “Entrepreneurship & Innovation within the Sino-EU context” and “SEEEP experience sharing and education internationalization”.

Other topics on the agenda were the initiation of a new joint research proposal in the field of artificial intelligence and the planning of the CLUSTER Symposium on 2^nd April 2020, which is aimed to celebrate the 30-years anniversary of the network.

With the change of TUDa’s President Hans Jürgen Prömel to Tanja Brühl, the Presidency of CLUSTER will be now led by TUDa’s new President Tanja Brühl. We sincerely congratulate and welcome our new President on her new position as CLUSTER’s President and believe that she will contribute a lot to CLUSTER’s development and improvement. We would like to express our thanks to TUDa’s and CLUSTER’s former President Hans Jürgen Prömel for his valuable input over the past year and wish him all the best for the future.

You are a Ph.D. student or a postdoc planning your next career step? You would like to apply for external funding to finance your own position but need to financially bridge the time up to the potential funding start? The Career Bridging Grant closes financial gaps between two career steps for candidates currently working at or aiming to work at TU Darmstadt. It provides short-term financial support for highly qualified candidates, who apply for funding with good prospects of success. The Career Bridging Grant secures financial support during the application process and thus facilitates a smooth transition to the next career step. This Career Programme is directed exclusively at international doctoral students and postdocs.
As one of the leading universities of technology in Germany, the TU Darmstadt offers a stimulating and cooperative research environment for young researchers. Our Postdoc Career Programme are directed at international doctoral students in the final stage of doctorate and international postdocs looking for a second postdoc. TU Darmstadt currently offer Career Bridging Grants and ´Future Talent´ Guest Stay Grants with deadline 15^th of November, 2019.

Learn more: Offers for Postdocs at TU Darmstadt.

Tomsk Polytechnic University is delighted to invite you to our International Week in Tomsk, Russia on December 9-11, 2019! The aim of this event is to deepen insights, expand fruitful networking and make new acquaintances for everyone involved. “Discover Russia” is the theme of the International Week. Another aim of the Week is to meet with representatives of international offices of universities of Asia, Europe and Russia to introduce the system of Russian higher education and the universities of Tomsk for improving effectiveness of international cooperation.

Based on this we would like to give you the possibility to

• present your home university and institution at an international mini-fair during the Week
• listen to key note speakers within the international Week´s subject areas
• take part in interesting work-shops
• give a lecture to Russian students

Please let us know which subject you are lecturing about. We encourage interdisciplinary lectures within the subject areas or in some other area of expertise that you would like to introduce.

Please see the Invitation and Preliminary Program for the International Week in Tomsk.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Tomsk Polytechnic University directly.
For more information you can also go to the official website of TPU International week 2019.
We are looking forward to your registration before November 10, 2019

You are invited to participate in Aalto University Entrepreneurial Education Week that will take place at Aalto University’s vibrant main campus in Otaniemi, Espoo, from 9th to 12th of December (https://avp.aalto.fi/summit). Learn Aalto’s way to teaching entrepreneurship and make your own courses stand out!

Aalto Ventures Program helps students to learn to build like an entrepreneur. Therefore, the emphasis in the “Aalto way” of teaching entrepreneurship is on developing student skills, competences and attitudes that they need for developing new businesses and initiatives in any type of environment.

Please join us in sharing entrepreneurial education practices in the second week of December. For those who want to deep dive into entrepreneurial course design, we’ve prepared Train the Trainers on Monday 9th and Tuesday 10th. And if you’d like to have a combination of workshops and keynotes to have an overview of Aalto entrepreneurial ecosystem and education, Entrepreneurial Education Summit would be a perfect fit for you.

We look forward to meeting you in December in Finland and share insights on entrepreneurial education practices with you and other partners.

* Groups more than 5 participants per organisation will get discounted price for both Train the Trainers and Summit.

CLUSTER has joined efforts with more than a dozen European organizations to call for an ambitious Horizon Europe budget that would invest in excellent, cross-border research and innovation (R&I). This investment is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to build a prosperous future for European society.

The 15 associations call on the EU Institutions and national policy makers to strengthen R&I investment at European level (see attached document). They urge them to raise the budget of the next EU Program for R&I (2021-2027), Horizon Europe, to at least €120 billion. Even though a greater amount would be needed to solve the big challenges mentioned above and match the program’s ambitions, this commitment would give the right signal to boost public and private R&I investment in Europe.

The joint effort must be reinforced to achieve the transformation that Europe needs, in order to build a prosperous, safe, inclusive and sustainable future for the next generations. The EU Leaders have recognised this necessity during the Sibiu Summit, committing to stay united and build a Union fit for the future with the means to match these ambitions.

The Call is open to receive support by organizations at national and European levels. We believe that the more organizations and institutions would adhere to these principles, the more likely our leaders at EU-level and in national contexts will be in a strong position to promote a higher budget for R&I.

CLUSTER highly encourages its members to sign the Call and to further disseminate it in their community of contacts to gather as many supporting organizations as possible to achieve an adequate budget for R&I.

CLUSTER Universities were successful in applying for the “Erasmus + Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education” fund with the project “InComm – Feel at Home.” InComm focuses on the transitional period for international Master’s and phD students upon their entry into their studies, seeking to study and optimize the first 3 months for these students before and after their enrolment at a university. One of the goals of the project is to develop and implement a “customer journey” for Master’s and PhD students starting from 3 months before matriculation and 3 months after entry, and to facilitate a “feel at home” environment to improve student excellence and promote internationalization.

The coordinator of the project is KTH Stockholm (Sweden) in co-coordination with TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands); other partner universities include), Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal), TU Darmstadt (Germany), Universitat de Cataluna (Spain), and TU Graz (Austria, outside the CLUSTER consortium). The CLUSTER strategic university network will serve the InComm project by providing an organisational framework. The project will officially start for all partners with a kick-off meeting in Eindhoven in October of 2019, and the funding period for the project will end in August 2022.

In 2017, French President Macron launched an initiative to create 20 European universities by 2025. This initiative would allow for universities to apply for fundings and create integrated alliances for cooperation in research and study. In June of 2019, 10 out of 13 CLUSTER institutions were awarded the title of “European University.” Among these 10 institutions, 7 are involved in the UNITE! Alliance.

UNITE! (University Network for Innovation, Technology, and Engineering) is an alliance coordinated by TU Darmstadt involving CLUSTER partners KTH Stockholm, Aalto University, INP Grenoble, UPC Barcelona, Politecnico di Torino, and University of Lisbon (IST). The goal of the alliance is to create a trans-European campus, extending from Finland to Portugal, for students and scholars with trans-European courses of study, scientific cooperation in teaching and research, and transnational knowledge transfer.

In addition to UNITE! we would also like to congratulate CLUSTER partners KU Leuven, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Trinity College Dublin for their successes in receiving recognition as “European Universities” through their respective alliances UNA Europa, EPICUR, and CHARM European University. All European University alliances with participation of CLUSTER members aim to not only foster transnational research and study but also provide a multidisciplinary and multicultural educational environments and will receive five million euros from the EU for the first three years.

For more information about the initiative please refer to the following website of the European Commission.

On behalf of Aalto University, a strategic partner of the Millennium Technology prize and Technology Academy Finland TAF, we encourage your organization to nominate candidates for the 2020 Millennium Technology Prize.

The Millennium Technology Prize is a prize of one million euros and awarded every two years by the TAF to an individual or to a team from any country, established by the Government of Finland, academic institutions, and high-tech industries in 2004. The patron of the Prize is the President of the Republic of Finland. The Prize will be awarded on 26 May 2020.

The Millennium Technology Prize highlights the impact of scientific innovations for the well-being of humanity and is awarded for groundbreaking technological innovations. To this day, three winners of the prize – Frances Arnold, Shinya Yamanaka and Shuji Nakamura – have gone on to become Nobel Laureates. A list of all former Millennium Technology Prize Winners is available at https://taf.fi/millennium-technology-prize/winners/.

Nominations for the 2020 Millennium Technology Prize will be accepted until 31 July 2019 at www.millenniumprize.fi/cfn, and are invited from organizations around the world and from all fields of technology, excluding military technology. Special emphasis is placed on proposals relating to:

• energy and environment
• life sciences, including health and food
• information and communications technology and smart systems
• new materials, processes and manufacturing

For further information on the Millennium Technology Prize and the nomination process, please visit www.millenniumprize.fi/cfn. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the CEO, Ari Ahonen (ari.ahonen@taf.fi) or COO Eeva Sievi (eeva.sievi@taf.fi) of the Technology Academy Finland TAF.

For information on Aalto University’s partnership with the Millennium Technology Prize:

Annukka Jyrämä
Senior advisor, PhD, Docent
Aalto University, Research Services
Research ethics and Integrity
Technology Academy Finland –relationship

Tel. +358-50373 2-238
annuka.jyrama@aalto.fi

The CLUSTER Consortium hosted students from all member universities at a second CLUSTER student representatives’ meeting in Barcelona from 4th to 5th July. The students in attendance discussed the organizational structure for their meetings and developed projects about future/new CLUSTER initiatives. More specifically, they considered the formation of a student council with a board and the development of an intensive 2-week  ‘CLUSTER course’ to target the student interest and engagement

All in all, this was a great opportunity for students to meet again with like-minded peers and to exchange experiences and ideas about international university education.