Accordion UNITE
The UPC coordinates two key areas of the alliance's actions: regional involvement and innovation, and the communication of the project. Regional Involvement and Innovation is one of the strategic lines of the Unite! alliance. The UPC is coordinating the creation of an open-innovation ecosystem that will provide the ideal environment to strenghthen the knowledge transfer between the academia and the industry.
The UPC is also coordinating the communication, dissemination and sustainability of Unite!. The aim is to allow Unite! to have a transformative impact in the European higher-education landscape of the 21st Century.
The European Commission proposed the European Universities Initiative in 2019 to push towards establishing a European Education Area by 2025. The European Universities are transnational alliances of higher education institutions from across the EU that share a long-term strategy and promote European values and identity. The initiative is designed to significantly strengthen mobility of students and staff, and foster the quality, inclusiveness and competitiveness of European higher education.
In 2019, responding to a first call under the Erasmus+ Framework Programme, the first 17 alliances were selected for a pilot phase of 3 years to build the foundations of the future European Universities. 24 more alliances followed in the 2nd call in 2020, as well as additional funding by the EU under the Horizon 2020 call “Science with and for Society”, in order to boost the Research and Innovation dimension of the European Universities towards a European Research Area.
| Name | Role within Unite! | |
|---|---|---|
| Juan Jesús Pérez, vice-rector of international policy | Key Liaison Officer (KLO) | |
| Josep Bordonau, researcher and professor | WP9 Coordinator- Regional Involvement and Innovation | |
| Lourdes Reig, researcher and professor | WP10 Coordinator - Dissemination and Sustainability |