Research Group Focus Map

ECIU University
SMART-ER

Research at ECIU UNIVERSITY

The ECIU University has developed a long-term joint research strategy on smart regions, building on the rapid development of digital infrastructures across Europe.

The ECIU University research strategy is aimed at addressing complex research challenges related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11): “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. At ECIU University research is challenge-based, use-inspired. More importantly, it is team-based research, and the universities work closely with partners from industry, government and civil society.

Therefore, to implement the research strategy, the ECIU University is creating a SMART-ER Virtual Research Institute, which is a framework for joint research, enabling all 12 ECIU University members to work together on the topics related to SDG 11.

Moreover, many areas within the broad scope of research, connected to SDG 11 topics, require efforts from many stakeholders – such as digital transformations to low-urbanized areas or implementing different services for mobility and transport.

Therefore, ECIU partners distinguish two cross-cutting concerns that will need to be addressed to make these transformations successful: human capital and co-creation, including interdisciplinarity. These two themes underpin the ECIU University research and innovation agenda and the SMART-ER activities.

Long-term joint research strategylearn more
Graphic visualising all people working on the smarter project in numbers

ECIU UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FIELDS

Energy and Sustainability

1. Climate-resilient energy sector

2. Encouragement to the producers to decrease the virgin raw materials consumption

3. Renewable sources of energy & integration of renewables in the energy system

4. Decarbonization of the power sector toward net-zero emission by 2020

5. Whole life cycle analysis.

6. The role of civil society and social movements in energy transitions

7. Social sustainability in the logistic sector and resource depletion for manufacturing processes

8. Citizen engagement targeting bringing the public on as a champion of research in this area to help "motivate" political policy

9. Embodied energy of products

10. Smart design of optimal and reliable energy systems

11. Reliability and Safety Study of Energy Systems

12. International provision chains for renewable energies

13. Energy storage

14. Transformative innovation perspectives

15. Resilient any-scenario communication networks 

Research Field Coordinator

research field coordinator Nelson Amadeu Dias Martins 
Nelson Amadeu Dias Martins 
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Researcher of TEMA (Centre for Mechanical Technology and Automation) and LASI (Intelligent Systems Associate Laboratory) University of Aveiro, Portugal

Research interests
Sustainable energy systems and a focus on heat transfer, nanofluids, CFD and energy system analysis.

Experience and current work:
Portuguese Delegate to the EU Energy Committee and an expert on energy certification systems in buildings and industry; an expert on the International Protocol for the Measurement and Verification of Energy Performance; a senior member of the Portuguese Engineering Society and the Portuguese Metrology Society, the Portuguese Society of Qualified Experts and the International Association of Energy Engineers; teaches subjects in the field of thermal and fluids with a focus on applied thermodynamics, refrigeration, air conditioning and energy management.

ECIU Intro Video to Energy and Sustainability

Circular Economy

1. Reuse (and recycling) of challenging waste fractions, such as multimaterials/composites and critical materials in the European context

2. Development of biological, thermal, physical and chemical technologies for resource recovery.

3. Investigate the impact of consumer behavioural change on the environmental, economic, and social aspects of a product's life-cycle.

4. Circular oriented innovation

5. Disassembling of product at end of life for component reusage

6. Development of products for circular economy

7. Effects of legislation and business models on circular economy solutions and the drivers and barriers regarding legislation at national and EU level.

8. Materials, such as Polymers, Construction materials and critical raw materials

9. Acceptance of different solutions, e.g. markets for nutrient products recovered from waste streams.

10. Execution and implementation of circular economy principles within an organization

11. Recovery of resources, e.g. nutrients, metals, carbon and/or energy, from industrial, municipal and agricultural waste streams

12. How to integrate CE-thinking into the development work (for example C2C innovation and stage-gate innovation work)

13. Circular construction

14. Sustainable exploitation of mineral raw materials (no more mining wastes; integral use of low-grades)

15. Food waste recycling and food waste valorization

Research Field Coordinator

research Field Coordinator Dr. Fernando Vilariño
Gopalakrishnan Kumar
Associate Professor
Institute of Chemistry, Bioscience and Environmental Engineering,
University of Stavanger, Norway

Research interests
Biofuel/biochemical & biopolymer production/valorisation from lignocellulose/organic waste/wastewater and algal biomass via biorefinery (Fermentation, Anaerobic digestion) and Microbial fuel/electrolysis cell (MFC& MEC) technologies.

Experience and current work:
>10 years profound knowledge and experience on various sustainable technologies towards circular economy aspect; PI/Co-PI on various projects related to circular economy; working on application of green synthesized activated carbon and Nano particles towards various environmental remediation applications (Lab Site); involved in Sustainability and Circular Economy Research Cluster (ScERC) in University of Stavanger towards an interdisciplinary connection between academy, industry and society.

ECIU Intro Video to Circular Economy

Transport and Mobility

1. Autonomous Driving and Smart Mobility. Create Methods for Multi-Sensors based Road Scene Analysis.

2. Artificial intelligence to mobility and transport prediction

3. Artificial Intelligence for Logistics Management

4. Urban transport in post covid era

5. Zero-emission public transportation

6. Smart design of optimal and reliable systems

7. Shareconomy in logistics (uberization of trucking, car sharing, crowdsourced logistics, platform, etc.).

8. Fully integrated multi-modal mobility options with transportation delay predictions and mobility apps from public administrations

9. Electric vehicles

10. Better use of travel card data for optimization

11. Sharing and utilization of real-time data in supply chains

12. Development and evaluation of integrated concepts in mobility and land use planning

13. Digitalisation of urban transport (shared mobility, mobility as a service), and its societal impacts

14. Walkability and emotions in urban environments

15. Bikeability – from car-dependency to soft mobility

Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Maria Huge-Brodin
Maria Huge-Brodin
Professor
Logistics and Quality Management, Department of Management and Engineering

Leader
Climate Smart Freight Transport Research Group Linköping University, Sweden

Resilient Communities

1. Trade-offs between resilience and equity/justice

2. Co-creation of practices facilitating resilient communities

3. Social health of communities & social capital (social networks, social trust, reciprocity norms)

4. Citizen participation

5. Employ scenario-building to stimulate community engagement in community engagement in co-creating sustainable and smart communities.

6. Renewable energy production balanced with consumption in a localised community-focused manner

7. Power relations in a resilient community: between members, between community and authorities, between community and society more in general

8. Urban infrastructures risks due to extreme events => nature-based solutions

9. Building on a broad range of stakeholder/community/professional experiences to ensure dealing with the most difficult problem for sustainability

10. How to promote the reuse and adaptation of the built stock to both climate change and social change

11. Analysis of how city-regions are emerging as key contexts for building resilient urban futures

12. Collective action problems associated with community adaptation and resilience

13. Hybrid governance solutions that involve communities, governments and market-based arrangements

14. Multimodality in urban resilient transport systems (car, cycling, shared mobility, public transport)

15. Citizen science/crowd-sourced science

Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Raúl Castaño
Raúl Castaño
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Built Environment Tampere University, Finland
SMART-ER Resilient Communities website

Citizen Science

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Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Dr. Fernando Vilariño
Fernando Vilariño
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science

Associate Director
Computer Vision Centre Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Research interests
Computer vision and machine learning with a particular focus on medical imaging.

Experience and current work:
Current Elected President of the European Network of Living Labs; awarded with the Spanish Gov. Ramon y Cajal Grant (2010) and Google Academy Award (2014) for his research; led different projects related to the implementation of models of Living Labs in the context of citizen-centric Open Innovation; coordinates Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ECIU Communities of Citizen Science; gives lectures in “Machine Learning”, “Robotics”, “Urban Open Innovation” and “Models of Open Innovation and Citizen Science”.


ECIU Intro Video to Citizen Science
See full ECIU University long-term joint research strategy here

About ECIU Smart-ER

ECIU SMARTER Video thumbnail
The ECIU University Research Institute for Smart European Regions (SMART-ER) is a research, innovation and education strong alliance, enabling all 12 ECIU University member institutions to jointly address complex societal challenges under the framework of the UN SDG11 (Sustainable cities and communities).

The SMART-ER is a new model of research and innovation, based on a virtual collaborative environment, will call scientists and researchers of the member universities for joint research initiatives and project activities. The SMART-ER together with diverse stakeholder groups at a local, national and international level, will promote the dialogue with society and will work according to a shared Research and Innovation (R&I) Agenda.

Jointly, the institutions piloted capacity building programmes (Seed Programme and SMART-ER Academy) and citizen science initiatives that will were used as a testbed to put into practice all the mechanisms and structures built.

The SMART-ER project is implemented under European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement #101016888

SMART-ER Deliverables

SMART-ER Academy

The SMART-ER Academy aims to offer a novel approach of training-capacity programmes that goes beyond the conventional praxis and comfort zone. This involves researchers from all their professional stages (from R1 to R4) in stimulating training, based on the ECIU University challenge-based learning approach (CBL), focusing the activities on relevant topics and addressing genuine local and regional challenges.

Under this framework, the task aims at generating a knowledge cloud, equipping researchers and other research staff with a combination of training skills, forward-looking competencies, Open Science skills, research integrity, interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial competencies. It also includes further development in non-academic settings with the collaboration of non-academic experts.

Two training programmes are designed under the SMART-ER Academy:

Online PhD Training Programme.

This fully on-line programme aims to train PhD researchers with the skills needed to face an unpredictable and changeable future. It will include skills in alignment with the EC Innovative Doctoral Training Principles (IDTP), the New Skills Agenda and the Modernisation Agenda and based on the challenge-based learning approach.
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Open Science & Leadership Blended-Training Programme.

The programme combines on-line interaction and traditional placed-based activities. It will provide SMART-ER researcher-leaders with the skills able to tackle the challenges of leading multidisciplinary research teams and networks of researchers. Training will also be provided to upgrade researcher-leaders’ skills in preparing project proposals, in holding workshops with the possibility of “pre-proposal preparation” events or “pitch-the-project-idea events”, and also to draw up a specific lists of potential project-funding programmes beyond the upcoming Horizon Europe.
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Research Maps

Click on a research area to get more information on the topics and the contact person for each.

SMART-ER Seed Programme

The Seed Programme supports initiatives focused in three main directions:

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picture about Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

This action aims to promote an increasing new generation of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative ECIU early-stage researchers, able to face current and future societal challenges.
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Blended mobility
to create networks

This action promotes inter-institutional collaboration through blended exchanging of research and innovation SMART-ER staff to create new networks or leverage existing networks aimed at contributing to SDG 11.
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participant of smart-er seed project

SMART-ER Seed Projects

This action promotes high-quality research outputs within SMART-ER through the funding of inter-institutional and inter-sectoral research and innovation Seed projects directly linked to the SDG11 challenges defined under ECIU University.
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PROJECTS FUNDED
BY SMART-ER SEED PROGRAMME

Digital Media Network DoctoralExperience (DiMeNDx)

ECIU University has created an optimal ecosystem for the development of networks to promote collaboration and progress in research, education and innovation closely connected with the design and evaluation of digital services and platforms as tools and solutions for challenges related with SGD11 goals associated with resilient communities. This project will promote the establishment of a network that will foster and increase collaboration in research initiatives as well as joint supervision of PhD students within the field of Digital Media among ECIU University members that will contribute to the improvement of UX, Usability and Accessibility of solutions used to reach the goals established by the UN in the resilient communities context.

Research Area
Resilient Communities
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro,
Rui Manuel de Assunção Raposo
Partner institution
Lodz University of Technology
University of Trento Dublin City
University Linköping University
Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Type of Action
Blended mobility to create networks
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ResearchEr Mobility Fund

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Citizen Science

Citizen Science, together with the integration of the stakeholders in the different processes of the research cycle, is a fundamental pillar of the SMART-ER project. 

Particularly, SMART-ER devotes a whole work package (WP5), which defines specific actions to develop a strong community of Citizen Science in the ECIU University. These actions are distributed in 3 tasks:

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The development of a platform for supporting Citizen Science projects.
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The coordination of 2 pilots onCitizen Science with the participation of the ECIU universities during the length of the project, starting in Spring 2022.
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The definition of a document for recommendation and guidelines for the development of Citizen Science projects.

In order to help consolidating a strong Community of Citizen Science, the ECIU Consortium organized a number of open webinars from September 2021. These webinars showcase the state-of-the-art of Citizen Science projects in the different Universities of the ECIU Consortium, and it well contribute to approach common challenges and topics of interest with the view on the identification of potential joint efforts for the pilots.

In addition, with the aim of co-designing the pilots with the ECIU's Community of Citizen Science, a CO-CREATION WORKSHOP was organized in FEBRUARY, 2022.


SMART-ER Series of Webinars on Citizen Science

Engaging the Community of Citizen Science researchers and practitioners at ECIU University.
The webinars will be recorded and published, and they can be accessed through eciu.org
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Public Engagement

SMART-ER aims to integrate public engagement in all the activities led by the VRI and to facilitate processes related to engaging all the different stakeholders of society in the research process.

We define public engagement as participatory multi actor dialogues and exchanges to foster mutual understanding, co-create research and innovation outcomes, and provide input to policy agendas.

Engaging with its various publics is of increasing importance to higher education in Europe and globally. It allows the sector to strengthen relevance, responsiveness and accountability in a sustainable manner.


The areas of intervention include:

  • Public sector: local, national and regional authorities, regional health care providers, European networks, cultural and sporting bodies, etc.
  • Private sector: industry/enterprise engagement, industry associations and chambers of commerce, public private partnerships (eg in health or transport), etc).
  • Civil society: community-based organisations (CBOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens assemblies, neighbourhood associations, etc.
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Find your colleagues involved in this community so far here

You are a researcher or staff member of an ECIU university and you have first-hand experience or interest in engagement methods and in developing further methods for doing research?  Join the community and participate to our future events by filling this registration form.

These are examples of activities that you can engage in by participating in this ECIUPublic Engagement Community of Practice:

  • develop engagement methods to enhance the ability of ECIU University to engage with society;
  • share best practices across the SMART-ER Institute;
  • provide support and expertise to the processes related to public engagement for the SMART-ER Institute and your institution.

SMART-ER Webinar Series on Public Engagement and Community of Practice

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