Boosting CBRNE Innovation in Southern CEE: Building a Resilient Ecosystem through Fostering Academy-Industry Collaboration

Project Information

GROUNDUP

Grant agreement ID: 101214954

DOI

10.3030/101214954

EC signature date 15 May 2025

Start date 1 June 2025

End date 31 May 2027

Funded under

• European innovation ecosystems

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 499 593,76

Coordinated by

INSTITUT ZA NUKLEARNE NAUKE VINCA INSTITUT OD NACIONALNOG ZNACAJA ZA REPUBLIKU SRBIJU, UNIVERZITET U BEGRADU
Serbia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GROUNDUP (Boosting CBRNE Innovation in Southern CEE: Building a Resilient Ecosystem through Fostering Academy-Industry Collaboration)

Reporting period: 2025-06-01 to 2026-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The deployment of CBRNE technologies is critical for non-military applications, particularly in safeguarding public health, preserving environmental integrity, and protecting vital industrial infrastructure. For the Southern Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, the rapid assimilation of state-of-the-art CBRNE research is essential to effectively manage emerging environmental threats, infrastructure fragilities, and increasingly complex border security demands.
While the Southern CEE region possesses substantial and competitive research capacities, the potential for technology development and market adoption remains largely untapped. The region struggles with several interconnected challenges. First, there are highly fragmented networks; the sector lacks the cohesive collaborations necessary for effective innovation and practical implementation. Second, there is slow market adoption, which creates a significant gap between academic research capabilities and real-world application. Finally, regional disparities remain a major hurdle. In contrast to the Southern CEE region, Western and Northern Europe have seen greater success due to better funding, streamlined collaboration, and well-established innovation ecosystems.

The GROUNDUP project was specifically designed to address these challenges. Our overarching aim is to build a strong, self-sustaining CBRNE innovation ecosystem in the Southern CEE region by uniting diverse stakeholders, including researchers, university students, businesses, and non-governmental organizations. The project focuses on four key objectives:
-Establish a Business Community: This initiative integrates stakeholders from the European CBRNE technology market value chain to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and bridge the gap between academic research and the commercial sector.
-Create an Education and Research Hub: This hub brings together higher education institutions and research organizations to advance knowledge, accelerate technology development, and create powerful synergies in CBRNE fields.
-Enhance Entrepreneurship: GROUNDUP links young innovators with established enterprises through a hands-on mentoring program aimed at providing targeted business guidance to at least 12 selected mentees.
-Maximize Visibility and Sustainability: The project expands its impact through extensive communication activities, hosting regional hackathons to engage students, and creating a large-scale cluster of relevant EU-funded projects.

The expected impact of GROUNDUP is multifaceted. For local talents, participating students, graduates, and researchers will gain crucial entrepreneurial, leadership, project management, and risk-taking skills. This leads to a more accessible pool of local talent equipped with the business acumen necessary to thrive in the CBRNE sector. For institutions, the project ensures the improved integration of Southern CEE educational and research organizations into Europe's wider innovation networks. Societally, GROUNDUP will boost entrepreneurial activity, helping to build innovative solutions to current and future societal challenges. Furthermore, GROUNDUP actively integrates social, ethical, and equality principles throughout its implementation. A dedicated Gender Equality Plan ensures balanced representation, while an independent Ethics Advisory Board oversees strict compliance regarding privacy, data protection, and responsible research methodologies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first reporting period, the GROUNDUP project successfully laid the foundational frameworks required for a resilient CBRNE innovation ecosystem in the Southern CEE region. Our primary focus was on fostering academy-industry collaboration, discovering new talent, and building regional institutional capacity.
A major initial achievement was the comprehensive mapping of the regional CBRNE landscape to identify key market players, research capacities, and technological trends. This extensive primary and secondary research established a Technology Provider database containing more than 95 institutions and small-to-medium enterprises, alongside a validated end-user list containing 93 key organizations. Based on these findings, we successfully completed both the Regional CBRNE Services and Technologies Catalogue and the Regional CBRNE Innovation and Startup Landscape. In tandem with market mapping, we conducted rigorous research capacity cataloguing. The Regional CBRNE Research Capacity Catalogue mapped 138 organizations with direct, complementary, or emerging relevance to the regional CBRNE ecosystem.
Transitioning seamlessly from planning to early execution, the project successfully prepared and launched the GROUNDUP Mentoring Programme.
Another significant operational milestone was the highly successful implementation of two major regional Hackathons, which served as vibrant platforms for talent discovery. Across the two in-person events, 52 participants organized into 16 diverse teams developed and presented 16 unique concepts. The Budapest Hackathon hosted 22 participants across 7 teams, while the Belgrade Hackathon engaged 30 participants across 9 teams. These events generated remarkable ideas, and top-performing teams were awarded practical developmental opportunities. For instance, the first-ranked Sentinel Net team was awarded a professional visit to Aquila Bio Science at the University of Galway to further their conceptual innovation.
Finally, leveraging a collaboration model which intertwines the public sector, industry, academia, and civil society, the project successfully initiated engagement with key stakeholders. By connecting technology providers, public authorities, and academic entities, we have firmly laid the groundwork for the future growth of the GROUNDUP Business Community and the Education and Research Hub. The essential systems required for academic-industry knowledge transfer, large-scale clustering, and regional institutional capacity building are now operationalized.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GROUNDUP moves significantly beyond the traditional state of the art, which often consists of isolated academic research and fragmented networking. Instead, it establishes a structured, highly interconnected CBRNE innovation ecosystem in the Southern CEE region. By utilizing a cohesive approach, GROUNDUP seamlessly integrates public authorities, the business ecosystem, academia, and civil society end-users into a singular, collaborative environment.

Instead of relying on traditional, siloed training and networking methods, GROUNDUP connects capacity mapping, talent discovery, and market validation into a single continuous process. The Education and Research Hub maps regional capacities and identifies high-potential innovators through targeted, high-energy hackathons. Once identified, these exceptionally talented individuals are directly linked to established industry professionals within the GROUNDUP Business Community via a hands-on, intensive Mentoring Programme. This structured pathway ensures that academic and deep-tech concepts do not languish in laboratories but are efficiently translated into viable, market-ready business plans.

These methodologies have the potential to significantly boost entrepreneurial activity, reduce long-standing regional innovation disparities, and drastically accelerate the market uptake of cutting-edge CBRNE technologies. By equipping students, graduates, and researchers with critical entrepreneurial, leadership, and risk-taking skills, the project inherently increases local youth employability and encourages intersectoral mobility.

To ensure further uptake and long-term success beyond the project's lifespan, several key needs have been identified and actively addressed. First, there is a crucial need for enhanced access to markets and finance, specifically bridging the gap between moderate innovator regions and strong European investor networks. Second, robust commercialization and intellectual property rights support is essential for guiding young entrepreneurs from raw concept to successful startup. Third, supportive regulatory frameworks must be championed through continued engagement with policymakers, standardisation bodies, and global networks like INTERPOL and UNODC. Finally, sustainable infrastructure sharing is required to guarantee long-term, cross-border access to sensitive CBRNE research and technology infrastructures for all ecosystem participants.