INDUSAC’s main objective is to develop and validate a state-of-the-art, Industry Academia collaboration (IAC) mechanism for quick, challenge-driven, human-centred co-creation. Its aim is to build upon pre-existing IAC mechanisms such as EIT KICs and to facilitate a simple, user-friendly co-creation process that allows to develop solutions that clearly address the needs and interests of companies, students, and researchers in the EU, with special attention to widening and associated countries. Of a highly digitalised nature, our project will pilot the mechanism’s two main components: a methodology developed by applying human-centred design principles and an online platform aimed at connecting stakeholders from the industry-academia ecosystem and at supporting them throughout their co-creation journey. The INDUSAC methodology will provide the guidance and tools needed to power the process, whilst the platform will stand as a networking space for stakeholders to connect, as well as a co-creation arena to develop joint solutions. Through the experience of supporting at least 300 transnational co-creation teams throughout project lifetime, the INDUSAC mechanism and its two key components will be successively improved until project end, delivering a tested mechanism ready for replication and upskilling. It is expected for INDUSAC to also create a dynamic community of industry-academia stakeholders, including at least 1000 companies, 3000 students and 300 researchers by project end. The INDUSAC counts with a strong interdisciplinary, cross-sectorial and geographically balanced partnership that counts with the needed expertise and network to achieve our project’s goals.

Europe is experiencing an increasing number of disasters due to natural hazards. The potential for a hazard to cause a disaster mainly depends on the vulnerability of the exposed community to a particular hazard. According to EM-DAT, for the period 1998–2009, earthquakes in Europe rank second in terms of fatalities and third in terms of overall losses. Further, flooding, along with storms, is the most important natural hazard in Europe in terms of economic losses. Actions and measures, can reduce the economic impact of a hazardous event. Within this context, scholars, government agencies, professional organizations as well as local communities seek to understand the three main stages of a disaster (i.e. Normal/Risk Reduction Stage, Emergency Response Stage, Recovery Stage) and take measures to lower the negative impact. The goal of ISTOS is, by the end of the project, to significantly strengthen the Scientific Excellence and Innovation Capacity of the collaborative Advanced Infrastructures and Materials (AIM) laboratory established at the Frederick Research Center (FRC) and the Large Structures laboratory (LSL) established at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). The aim is to turn the collaborative laboratories at FRC and CUT into a Center of Excellence, “ISTOS”, which will be based in Cyprus. The proposed ISTOS project will achieve its goal by creating strong links between the AIM, LSL and two internationally leading research institutions namely the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) of Greece and the PLINIVS Study Centre, University of Naples Federico II (PLINIVS-LUPT) of Italy. Through ISTOS, the research profile and expertise of the staff, of FRC and CUT, will be raised while at the same time enhancing the S&T capacity of the linked institutions.

Misinformation generates misperceptions, which have affected policies in many domains, including economy, health, environment, and foreign policy. Co-Inform is about empowering citizens, journalists, and policymakers with co-created socio-technical solutions, to increase resilience to misinformation, and to generate more informed behaviors and policies. The aim of Co-Inform is to co-create these solutions, with citizens, journalists, and policymakers, for (a) detecting and combating a variety of misinforming posts and articles on social media, (b) supporting, persuading, and nourishing misinformation-resilient behavior, (c) bridging between the public on social media, external fact checking journalists, and policymakers, (d) understanding and predicting which misinforming news and content are likely to spread across which parts of the network and demographic sectors, (e) infiltrating echo-chambers on social media, to expose confirmation-biased networks to different perceptions and corrective information, and (f) providing policymakers with advanced misinformation analysis to support their policy making process and validation. To achieve these goals, Co-Inform will bring together a multidisciplinary team of scientists and practitioners, to foster co-creational methodologies and practices for engaging stakeholders in combating misinformation posts and news articles, combined with advanced intelligent methods for misinformation detection, misinformation flow prediction, and real-time processing and measurement of crowds' acceptance or refusal of misinformation. Co-Inform tools and platform will be made freely available and open sourced to maximize benefit and reuse. Three main stakeholder groups will be directly engaged throughout this process; citizens, journalists, and policymakers.

<< Background >>The Food & Drink industry is the EU largest manufacturing sector in terms of turnover, value added and employment. Despite of market turmoils also due to Covid-19, it remains stable and dominates the EU external trade. Higher Education and training activities in the food sectors are growing in the EU largely dominated by conventional study programmes and teaching methodologies that in general do not allow the achievement of competences and skills needed by the current and future job market.<< Objectives >>The ASKFOOD main aim was to create a permanent knowledge sharing alliance between businesses, business associated organisations and Universities in the food and food-related sectors. Establishing such an alliance, the ASKFOOD consortium: (1) created the necessary frame for collaboration, (2) converted innovative concepts into new tools to be provided within this frame(3)tested and applied innovative training methodologies(4)ensured sustainability by establishing a permanent alliance<< Implementation >>The project has:-implemented a series of virtual tools to early discovery and anticipate trends and related emerging skills-implemented an interactive platform and dynamic networking for multisector knowledge sharing and co-creation-improve training models, by launching disruptive, learner-led and cross-industry training schemes, i.e. Reverse incubator -set up common tools and organizational frame that will guarantee the sustainability of the network: the permanent Observatory.<< Results >>•Cross-industry knowledge platforms (Knowledge and Training Hub and Clusters) •Open Innovation framework to modernize education/training (ASKFOOD DBTE)•Interactive repository of emerging skills and professional profiles in the food sector in a forward-looking perspective (Interactive Atlas) so to forecast future skill needs (Forecast Aggregator) •Acceleration and growth hacking solutions (Reversed Incubator, ASKFOOD Garage Labs)•Permanent ASKFOOD Observatory