The Arqus European University Alliance awarded €2 million in the H2020 call for support for the Research and Innovation Dimension of European Universities

Through this project, Arqus aims to enhance the research and innovation dimension of the Alliance’s activities and to address current global societal challenges through intensified joint research characterised by the pursuit of excellence, openness, transparency and effective engagement with society.

The Arqus Alliance has been awarded €2M for a 3-year period to foster the partners’ cooperation in research and innovation. Based on the analysis of existing strengths, prior cooperation and shared strategic research interests, the Alliance will focus on the fields of Artificial Intelligence/Digital Transformation and Green Deal/Climate Change as transversal priority areas for enhanced research collaboration, characterised by their interdisciplinarity. This funding complements the €5M that the Arqus Alliance obtained as one of the first 17 Alliances of the European Universities Initiative funded by Erasmus+, and will contribute to the R&I transformation of the European Universities in synergy with their education dimension.
The project Arqus Research & Innovation is organised around three major challenges, all intended to foster a context to nurture sustainable strengthened collaboration. The first addresses Joint Science and Innovation, through building an Arqus research community and designing a roadmap for transformation(al) excellence. The second centres on New Perspectives on Research, seeking to strengthen human capital through alternative approaches to assessment and recognition, and to re-thinking transfer, with special reference to the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. The third, Open to Society, focusses on the culture change brought by Open and Citizen Science.
The project aims to complement and build on efforts already underway to foster scientific cooperation within the Alliance, and to seek synergies between the education, research and innovation dimensions of Arqus.