Building Europe’s research and innovation communities
The effects of cross-border research and innovation projects are not felt evenly across the EU. Some countries face obstacles such as less developed infrastructure, difficulties retaining skilled talent, and structural barriers at the regional or national level. This is particularly the case in Poland and Portugal, which ends up limiting their involvement in high-impact projects and reducing the benefits they gain from EU research and innovation. Launched in 2024 to address the hurdles these two countries face, the EU-funded Unite.WIDENING(opens in new window) project is working to accelerate reforms and competence building by strengthening collaboration across Europe.
Kicking off training
With research and innovation excellence as its goals, the project held its first Unite.WIDENING Training Action in Autrans, France, from 3 to 7 November 2025. Titled ‘Building Research Communities’, the event brought together 12 researchers from project partner Wrocław University of Science and Technology (Poland) and project coordinator University of Lisbon (Portugal). The goal was to explore how research communities form, expand and endure across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Participants had the opportunity to work with researchers from the nine universities in the Unite! European university alliance(opens in new window), of which Unite.WIDENING is a part. “This proximity helped initiate concrete collaborations, identify shared research interests and outline concrete next steps, and foster early-stage research communities,” reports a ‘Unite!WIDENING’ news item(opens in new window). Four areas were prioritised: health and biotech, urban and resource sustainability, circular economy and materials, and digital and autonomous technologies. The programme eschewed traditional lectures in favour of practical methods and shared tools for building long-term research partnerships. These included a matchmaking session promoting new collaborations, success stories of projects that have grown into larger initiatives, a session presenting useful tools for researchers and workshops. The event was the first in Unite.WIDENING’s training series that comprises 21 training actions, a number of workshops and four staff weeks – all intended to improve the research capacity of participating institutions and strengthen collaborative ties within the Unite! alliance. The training series will continue throughout 2026 and 2027.
Connecting academia and industry
‘Digital Campus Hub for companies and SMEs Presentation’, another Unite.WIDENING initiative, focused on fostering collaboration between universities and industry. This was held in two sessions in the second half of November – one at the University of Lisbon and the other at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. At these two hybrid events, representatives from universities, research centres and businesses came together to explore new opportunities for collaboration in innovation and digital transformation. The initiative centred around the AGORA digital platform(opens in new window) that was inspired by the ancient Greek concept of the agora as a meeting place where people gathered to trade goods and exchange ideas. The platform provides a shared digital space where universities and businesses can access acceleration services and share resources, knowledge and expertise. It was created by another EU-funded project, aUPaEU(opens in new window), that brings together five academic institutions from the Unite! and EPiCUR(opens in new window) university alliances to accelerate the transformation of higher education institutions across Europe. The Digital Campus event showcased the AGORA platform’s first features: access to digital resources, virtual mobility and integrated collaboration tools. Through Unite.WIDENING (Raise excellence in R&S&I in HEI for widening countries), future efforts will revolve around extending the platform’s reach beyond academia to industry partners. For more information, please see: Unite.WIDENING project website(opens in new window)