Category: Featured article

The second 2020 Steering Committee of CLUSTER was held virtually at Politecnico di Torino from 29th to 30th of October.

Prior to this Steering Committee additional working group meetings were organised, such as a meeting of the students’ representatives and a meeting of the communication working group for the 30^th anniversary celebration.

The main focus of discussion was the relationship between the CLUSTER network and the 6 European university alliances in which all members of CLUSTER are involved and their relative positioning. Moreover, the creation of a new working group on sustainable development in engineering programs was decided.

Current and upcoming activities of the Consortium were intensively discussed during the Steering Committee such as a virtual 30th anniversary, the students’ implication in the network, the future agreement for the SEEEP doctoral training program with China or the role & admission of associate members.

The next Steering Committee and the annual General Assembly will be held at KTH in Stockholm from 17th to 19th of March 2021.

As one of the leading universities of technology, located in Rhine-Main-Area in the heart of Germany, Technical University of Darmstadt offers a stimulating and cooperative research environment for young researchers. Our Postdoc Career Programmes are directed at international doctoral students in the final stage of doctorate and international postdocs looking for a second postdoc.

TU Darmstadt ongoing calls Career Bridging Grants and ´Future Talent´ Guest Stay Grants are open until closing date 15^th of November, 2020.

Learn more: Announcements for Postdocs at TU Darmstadt.

In view of the current corona situation, CLUSTER universities are making great efforts to deal with this situation, always driven by the paradigm of safeguarding the health and well-being of their students, staff and faculties and fulfilling their social responsibility. Immediate measures include adapting their training and research activities to this new situation, the development and implementation of e-learning courses and hackathons, virtual team building measures and psychological hotlines. In addition, the CLUSTER universities are using their technological know-how to contribute to the successful fight against Covid-19, e.g. by providing temporary hospitals or respiratory equipment. An overview of the measures taken can be found here:

TU Darmstadt:

UPC Barcelona:

Politecnico di Torino

Aalto

Aalto info for students

TU Eindhoven

Trinity College Dublin

UC Louvain

IST Lisbon

EPF Lausanne

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

KTH Stockholm

INP Grenoble

KU Leuven

CLUSTER associated members:

Tomsk Polytechnic University

Universidade de Sao Paulo

The Aalto University and Aalto Ventures Program would like to warmly invite students to participate in the virtual summer course ‘Creating Multidimensional Experiences’ which will be held from 3rd to 21st August 2020 at Aalto University, Otaniemi Campus, Espoo, Finland. 

About the course

Registration

Individual registrations for the course can be done through the website. Institutional pricing is available for groups of 5 or more participants.

Application Deadline

Application Deadline: June 30th, 2020*
*Application done and submitted before the date

Coronavirus update & Cancellation policy

We have recently decided that our summer course will be organized online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will follow the most up-to-date guidance from both sources during the summer. In the unfortunate event that we need to cancel summer course due to ongoing regulations, we will fully refund the payment of the course.

For related questions, please feel free to contact Ms. My Nguyen (my.2.nguyen@aalto.fi) at Aalto Ventures Program.

In light of the recent COVID-19 developments, CLUSTER will host its annual General Assembly on April 3, 2020 from 10-12am CET as a virtual meeting. Among the most important items on our agenda are the election of the next CLUSTER president, the inauguration of the CLUSTER Student Organisation (CSO), and the report on the current CLUSTER presidency by TU Darmstadt. While we regret the cancelation of the CLUSTER 30th Anniversary Symposium and all other in-person events scheduled to take place in Darmstadt between April 1 and 3, the health and safety of our colleagues, staff, and students are naturally our highest priority.

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.

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.