Unite! aims to be a model for a European University of innovation, technology and engineering addressing the Sustainable Development Goals through the twin digital and green transition. As a strategic, agile and dynamic alliance of universities based on shared values with a common vision and mutual trust, Unite! commits to deepening, intensifying, strengthening and broadening its institutionalised cooperation across all four missions of our universities. Building on the achievements of the ongoing projects, Unite! has set the following key objectives to be achieved by 2030: strategic long-term collaboration, a strong and inclusive community, innovative teaching and learning opportunities and a well-developed virtual, physical, and blended trans-European Campus with seamless mobility.To achieve these goals, we will establish seed funding to foster bottom-up community development and strengthen student involvement and engagement throughout our activities. Unite! will expand by integrating two new partners from Central and Eastern Europe and by outreaching to other external stakeholders. Communities will be created in our focus areas Sustainable Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, Entrepreneurship as well as other areas yet to be defined. Unite! will offer state-of-the-art learning opportunities with innovative pedagogies for challenge-based approaches, student-centred learning, and high-quality interaction in digital, hybrid and face-to-face learning environments. In particular, Unite! will foster joint programmes and joint pedagogical trainings, implement creative virtual teaching and learning spaces as well as be at the forefront for the implementation of the European Degree and the development of a European Doctoral School. We will continue to build the hybrid and multilingual Unite! trans-European Campus with easily accessible joint educational offerings, shared and pooled resources, efficient services and green mobility.

Air pollution is an increasingly important concern in larger cities and industrial areas. To date, much attention has been devoted to monitoring of particulate matter (PM), yet sensing of toxic or cancerogenic gas species formed i.e. in combustion of low-quality fuels is still challenging. The new National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive (2016/2284/EU) has set commitments for member states on several important air pollutants, of which two groups: non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are difficult to monitor using existing electrochemical or laser-based technologies to ensure sufficient sensitivity and selectivity. To address this need, the objective of this proposal is to develop a novel class of broadband and high-resolution laser spectrometers for open-path atmospheric monitoring. The instrument will exploit a pair od optical frequency comb (OFC) sources, which operate in the spectroscopically-relevant mid-infrared region where NMVOCs and POPs have their strongest and most unique absorption features. Unlike all prior attempts, this project aims to advance the field by enabling completely unstabilized operation of the sources using real-time computational signal enhancement referred to as Computationally Enhanced Molecular Sensing with Optical Frequency Combs (CEMOS-OFC). By generating two mutually coherent OFCs in a shared cavity, the need for complex phase synchronization electronics in dual-comb spectroscopy is eliminated, which paves the way for practical out-of-laboratory measurements of multi-species gas mixtures over open-path channels reaching hundreds of meters corresponding to part-per-million to parts-per-billion sensitivities. In addition to environmental gas sensing, spectroscopic analysis of simple algae and pharmaceuticals in the mid- to far-infrared region is also proposed.

Context: Material science is being developed, and major industries such as aerospace and automotive take advantage of cutting-edge technologies in their applications. As light-weight materials along with superior strength are demanded by the market, composite materials have come to the fore as the substituent of metal alloys. Although the technical side of industrial applications is compensated by the rise of composites, sustainability and eco-friendly properties of materials, which have important places within the EU policy areas, still require efforts by institutes and companies. At this juncture, composites produced from natural materials such as cork become more of an issue due to their environmentally friendly properties. There are about 2,200,000 hectares of cork forest; 34% in Portugal and 27% in Spain. Cork production is sustainable because the cork tree is not cut down to obtain cork; only the bark is stripped to harvest the cork. The tree continues to live and grow. The sustainability of production and the easy recycling of cork products and by-products are two of its most distinctive aspects. Cork oak forests also prevent desertification and the refuge of various endangered species. Leading companies especially in aerospace sector make investments on cork. However, there is a lack of human resources in the field since syllabuses in engineering programs focus on technical sides rather than including environmental effects of engineering materials. Objective:ECOCORK aims to develop educational tools for gaining environmental awareness in the manufacturing of cork composites as well as understanding the importance of eco-friendly natural composites in sustainability. Within this scope, partners will develop an educational scheme and project will be concentrated on individuals at the college level. The institutions will develop curricula, course materials, learning platforms, as well as organizing summer schools for the students. Moreover, staff skills will be enhanced in a particular and promising field by the interactions between the pacemaker partners. The industrial partner, ACC will contribute to the preparation of training programs on sustainability and carbon footprint of cork products since this company is a leader cork producer in the world. Within this scope of strategic partnership, there will be an established bridge from the homeland of cork (Portugal and Spain) to Eastern Europe, where vast amounts of investments have been paid for aerospace applications. Hence, there will be a chance to have a good educational partnership in the development of sustainable cork composites for the aerospace industry. Number and profile of participants:ESOGU has a background in aerospace industry since there are several projects conducted in collaboration with major aerospace companies. Moreover, National Aviation Cluster has members from ESOGU staff who take active roles in this sector. In 2019, TAI demanded a prospective human source from ESOGU and thus, ESOGU applied for the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) and a new engineering department, Department of Aeronautical Engineering, was founded in 2019.UA is one of the biggest universities in cork science. It makes broad researches on cork related applications. It has strong relationships with ACC and the other cork focused institutes from all over the world. ACC is one of the largest and dynamic multinationals of Portuguese origin. Its origins were back in 1870 and today it is the world leader in the sector. It is also willing to serve for aerospace industry since cork products have been recognized in aerospace due to their properties. ICSURO is dedicated to cork science researches. The explicit name of ICSURO is Catalan Institute of Cork, which proves that this institutes has strong experience on cork for many years. The Cork Center, the laboratory of the Catalan Cork Institute was created in 2001 to provide services to the different components of the value chain in the cork sector.WUST is notable for cork composites and has joint studied with UA in a long-term collaboration. WUST and UA have applied for several grants and so far, this partnership brought approx. 325,000 Euro to the organizations in grants. VGTU has experience in projects under the Erasmus+, Horizon2020, Marie-Curie and other EU funded programs. It has strong experience that the Dean of Aviation Institute has been awarded Quality of the Year award by National Agency of Lithuania. VGTU has also Erasmus+ projects in contribution with Turkish universities such as Ege University.