Unite! looks to the future

With over 250 academic, staff and student participants coming from nine European Universities, the Unite! Alliance's sixth Dialogue was hosted at Politecnico di Torino on September 20-22. 

Aalto University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Grenoble INP - UGA, Politecnico Di Torino, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech, the Universidade de Lisboa, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Graz University of Technology and the Technical University of Darmstadt  gathered at PoliTO for three days of conferences, workgroups and labs to present the next four years of activities, the main Erasmus+ pilot phase closing results, and the H2020 ongoing activities.

The Dialogue symbolically represented the closing of the project's pilot phase and the launch of the Alliance's second phase, recently refinanced by the EC for the next four years. Starting in November 2022, the second phase of the Alliance activities begin.

Together with the University delegations, other main participants were EC representatives, CRUI Rector’s Conference, the main German technical Universities’ network – TU9, plus Torino, Barcelona and Stockholm municipalities and the other five CLUSTER European Alliances.

The Rectors of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology and the Graz University of Technology also signed the Unite! Charter, thus sealing their official entry into the Alliance.

The Alliance's Erasmus+ project is focused on education and training, specifically addressing a joint doctorate degree, and has involved more than 500 people in the academic, administrative and student communities in the past three years.

The pilot phase of the second main Unite! project, funded within the H2020 program and focused on research and innovation, was another key theme of the Dialogue: all staff involved in the two projects gathered for the first time on this occasion.

“The VI Dialogue was a great success, both in terms of the amount of participants and the level and variety of speakers at the different panel discussions organized over the three-day duration of the event”, commented Professor Roberto Zanino, Unite!’s Key Liaison Officer for Politecnico di Torino. “For the first time, all the Rectors and Presidents of the nine partner Universities came together in a workshop moderated by CESAER Secretary General, David Bohmert. At the same time, it was possible to bring together in a round table discussion representatives of cities such as Turin, headquarters of different European University Alliances, as well as to organize a meeting between representatives of all six CLUSTER network Alliances, including Unite!”.