In order to be able to build harmonised and coherent research strategies within UNITA, a survey was conducted, under the coordination of USMB, to gather key information on the following data:
- research funding in the institutions of the alliance
- organisation of research and research units
- human resources involved in research
Thanks to this survey and associated resulting report, we have now a more concrete and complete picture of the organisation of research in the alliance. This result enables us to work in a more comprehensive way, based on a better mutual knowledge.
One of the UNITA objectives regarding research policies is to highlight and promote interdisciplinarity and open-innovation. A think-tank, composed, among others, by UNITA R&I hubs directors, vice-rectors for research and coordinating team of Re-UNITA, has drawn a Roadmap to interdisciplinarity and open-innovation in UNITA. This roadmap is a reference document targeting specific activities to be organized and designed in order to promote interdisciplinarity in all research-connected UNITA activities.
An important task has been dedicated to the European label HRS4R, and a state of the art among UNITA partners. Since two partners had already obtained the label before Re-UNITA kick-off, they have been able to share their practices and experiences regarding this label. A questionnaire has been shared among all partners to map their status regarding the HRS4R label. Thanks to the answer, a roadmap has been designed on October 2022 and finalized in February 2023, describing the steps the partners will follow to get the HRS4R label.
Another priority addressed regarding the human resources and the environment offered to UNITA researchers is the gender issues and imbalances within research careers.
Re-UNITA is also experimenting new practices, dedicated to the integration of local partners in research. Indeed, the Phd Talent Development programme (task 3.3) has been launched with the objective to raise challenges proposed by local stakeholders to be solved by UNITA PhD Students. More precisely, each university has invited local partners (NGOs, local authorities, companies, etc.) to identify relevant challenges in the three core thematic. These challenges will be presented to teams of PhD students in a competition to be organised in the second half of the project.
The development of a network of shared infrastructures has been carried out in the framework of the project with the objective to provide easy access to some of the infrastructures of each university to the researcher community of the whole alliance. Such a development was made difficult because each University has specific legal rules (that might come from national level), infrastructure property circumstances and different maturity levels.
The first phase (M1-M12), consisted in designing, building and agreeing the way that the infrastructures provided by six different Universities from 5 different countries might be shared.
Held on September 22nd 2022, the first SpinOff Forum, was an online meeting created in order to show the SpinOff ecosystem of the UNITA Universities, presenting successful spinoffs, showing what they do and promoting their work.
Autumn Entrepreneurship School
The first Autumn Entrepreneurship School happened in October 19th 2022. It was organized as an online training day in entrepreneurship for all researchers of the alliance (specially PhD students) who wish to receive specific and professional training in entrepreneurship.
The Innovation Prize intended to boost Open Innovation in the UNITA community and to contribute to the knowledge of Open Innovation between partners inside the UNITA community, and outside
Involvement of citizens, civil society and public actors in research and innovation and development of Open Science practices
