ENFIELD will create a unique European Centre of Excellence that excels the fundamental research in the scientific pillars of Adaptive, Green, Human-Centric, and Trustworthy AI that are new, strategic and of paramount importance to successful AI development, deployment, and acceptance in Europe and will further advance the research within verticals of healthcare, energy, manufacturing and space by attracting the best talents, technologies and resources from world-class research and industry players in Europe and by carrying out top-level research activities in synchronisation with industry challenges to reinforce a competitive EU position in AI and create significant socio-economic impact for the benefit of European citizens and businesses. ENFIELD will develop, maintain, scale-up and sustain a vibrant European network on AI composed of 30 consortium members from 18 countries, including top-level education and research organisations, large scale businesses, SMEs, and public sector representatives jointly addressing critical issues of research and innovation frontiers in this new topic of the European AI Lighthouse. ENFIELD will provide high impact outputs such as >75 unique AI solutions (algorithms, methods, simulations, services, data sets and prototypes), 180 scientific high-impact publications and 200 peer-reviewed presentations, four strategic documents, namely the Common Research Roadmap and Vision, the dynamic Safety and Security Risk Assessment Framework, the White Paper and the Gender and Ethics Framework. The exchange and innovation schemes planned in Open Calls, which will grant financial support to >76 individual researchers and 18 small-scale projects, education, and training activities such as summer schools and hackathons, and a set of well-designed outreach methods and activities will further contribute to the ENFIELD community engagement, enlargement, and continuity.

The ECC-SMART is oriented towards assessing the feasibility and identification of safety features of an intrinsically and passively safe small modular reactor cooled by supercritical water (SCW-SMR), taking into account specific knowledge gaps related to the future licensing process and implementation of this technology. The main objectives of the project are to define the design requirements for the future SCW-SMR technology, to develop the pre-licensing study and guidelines for the demonstration of the safety in the further development stages of the SCW-SMR concept including the methodologies and tools to be used and to identify the key obstacles for the future SMR licencing and propose a strategy for this process. To reach these objectives, specific technical knowledge gaps were defined and will be assessed to achieve the future smooth licensing and implementation of the SCW-SMR technology (especially the behaviour of materials in the SCW environment and irradiation, validation of the codes and design of the reactor core will be developed, evaluated by simulations and experimentally validated). The ECC-SMART project consortium consists of EU, Canadian and Chinese partners to use the trans-continental synergy and knowledge developed separately by each partner. The project consortium and project scope were created according to the joint research activities under the International Atomic Energy Agency, Generation-IV International Forum umbrella and as much data as possible will be taken from the already performed projects. This project brings together the best scientific teams working in the field of SCWR using the best facilities and methods worldwide, to fulfil the common vision of building an SCW-SMR in the near future.

The main, overall objective of the proposal is to establish the Centre of Excellence in Production Informatics and Control (EPIC) as a leading, internationally acknowledged focus point in the field of production informatics, management and control representing excellence in R&D&I. EPIC will be constituted and run through the cooperation of the Institute for Computer Science and Control, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI), two faculties of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) and four institutions of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG) under the coordination of the National Innovation Office (NIH), Hungary as a governmental decision maker. The EPIC project will lead to: 1. The upgrade of MTA SZTAKI as existing Centre of Excellence of the EU. 2. The further development of the Fraunhofer-SZTAKI Project Centre for Production Management and Informatics (PMI), a joint initiative of FhG and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), established in 2010. (The cooperating Fraunhofer institutions have been the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), Stuttgart and Fraunhofer Austria (FhA)). 3. The extension of the present cooperation with two faculties of BME, i.e., the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (GPK) and the Faculty of Transportation Engineering and Vehicle Engineering (KJK), on the one hand, and with two additional institutes of FhG, i.e., the Institute for Production Technology (IPT), Aachen and the Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK), Berlin. 4. The close cooperation with SMEs as well as with large industrial firms. Due to direct, institutionalized and supported interactions with Fraunhofer, not only the scientific capabilities of the Hungarian partners but also their ability to transfer scientific results to industry-relevant applications will be greatly enhanced. By this way a “high speed lift” to innovation culture and performance in Hungary and the CEE region will be provided.

Research has shown that the engineers of the 21st century have to possess more than just state of the art technical knowledge and skills. According to research they will have to be able to tackle complex problems, think outside the box, understand not only the individual technical details, but the overall picture, work in interdisciplinary teams, be creative and innovative, so that they can apply the knowledge in new and exciting ways, manage, motivate and inspire people, adapt to changes. This is not only known from studies and projections, but also from the needs analysis and the feedback from the employers of the graduates of the HE institutions involved. Research and needs analysis of the partner organisations also shows that the educators are not well informed, nor equipped with the competences to successfully implement innovative pedagogies, such as the FCA (Flipped classroom approach), which could allow the use of learning approaches to foster the above mentioned competences, nor is the adoption of the FCA from other fields and levels of education easily and successfully made without analysis of the special needs of the courses, the students and the educators. Needs analysis also showed that the educators also lack the knowledge and information about ICT tools available to support the development of efficient blended learning approaches, including e-content development, learning management systems, opportunities of innovative technologies, like augmented reality. The project PolyFlip aims to build on good practice examples in other disciplines and levels of education, current research findings on this topic and adapt and implement the flipped classroom approach (FCA), to enable and encourage active, student centred and collaborative learning in (Polymer technology) engineering programs. By developing, adapting, piloting, promoting and disseminating the developed concept, e-materials, trainings and case studies, it aims to improve the motivation and the competences of the educators and foster the faster uptake of FCA in partner and other HE institutions, other STEM fields and other countries. This will also raise the competences of the HE institutions to successfully implement other blended learning techniques, which has in light of the COVIS 19 epidemic, found to be very important and challenging.The consortium consists of three HEI with Polymer Technology courses (from Slovenia, Austria and Hungary) and two partners with experiences and know-how in FCA design and implementation, as well as design and implementation of trainings in this topic and in ICT tools available for designing quality e-content and learning paths (from Slovenia and Belgium). The project will deliver and disseminate the following outputs: a new FCA concept for HE science and engineering courses, on-line FCA training course and description, evaluation and dissemination of case studies implemented during the time of the project and presented in the Case study Report. The intellectual outputs will not only be available to partner organisations, but will be disseminated via the project webpage and social media activities as well as at several multiplier events (in all partner countries) to other HEIs and other education institutions as well. They will be available in English, Slovene, German, Dutch and Hungarian, not only fort he duration of the project, but also after its complition. Furthermore the project includes a FCA face to face training, where the involved educators from partner HE institutions will be facilitated in designing the FCA in their courses, including the design of the e-content. The participants will then pilotly implement the courses, which will be presented in the Case study report.With dissemination activities of the project outcomes, educators from other HEIs in partner and nonpartner countries and consequently their students, will benefit as well. With the described, evaluated and presented case studies of the FCA implementation in a variety of very different science and engineering courses and in all partner languages, the educators will be able to relate to the pilot implementation and their outcomes, use the developed freely available tools, which will foster the faster and successful uptake of this innovative pedagogy. This is very important since research has shown that the engineering HE programs are lagging behind other disciplines and levels of education in implementing the FCA approach and that for the approach to yield the desired outcomes, a very important prerequisite is motivating and equipping the educators with the mindset and the didactical, pedagogical and technical skills.Their will be positive impact on research results as well, since most of the research on FCA has been done outside EU and very little research has been done on the HE level and focusing on the impact on educators and not only students.