Erasmus + program approves UÉ projects

On the 3rd of August, the European Commission (EC) approved six research projects that UÉ is although leading or integrating. Of the six collaborative projects, two are led by UÉ Units: the Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development (MED) and the Office for Support to Innovation, Transfer, Entrepreneurship and Cooperation (GAITEC) and the rest in collaboration with more than 70 public institutions and companies from 21 countries, including the University of Oslo, the University of Pisa and the Technological Institute of Costa Rica.

The FoSaMed - Enhancing Food Safety in the Mediterranean project, coordinated by MED researcher Marta Laranjo, aims to increase skills and improve relations between Morocco and European higher education institutes. By creating a master's degree in Sanitary Inspection, FoSaMed intends to modernize and internationalize the food sector in terms of control and safety issues. Cooperating with the University of Évora are also the University of Barcelona, the Union of Mediterranean Universities (UNIMED) and four schools and higher institutes in Morocco.

Concerning the TETRIS project - Technology Transfer Innovation Schemes in Latin America, developed by GAITEC and led by Soumodip Sarkar, it aims to contribute to the economic development of Latin American countries. Based on the transfer of technical and scientific knowledge to the means of production, TETRIS intends to foster relations and partnerships between universities and industries of the various partners in the region - Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama. The project will also count on the cooperation of researchers from France, Spain and Germany.

The remaining four projects prove UÉ's commitment to internationalization and are the result of several international partnerships:

NEGHTRA - Next Generation Training on Intelligent Greenhouses, led by the University of Patras, in Greece, and coordinated at UÉ by Fátima Baptista, from MED, has as main objective to provide innovative and specialized training in the field of smart greenhouse technologies, having with a view to greater economic and environmental sustainability in the area of agriculture.

The SSAPI - Strategic Support for Accreditation of Programs and Internationalization at South Asian Higher Education Institutes is Teresa Gonçalves, from NOVA.LINCS, who assumes the coordination of the UÉ research team, and the consortium is led by the Capital University of Science & Technology in Islamabad, Pakistan. The project aims to develop new strategies to overcome the main challenges faced by Asian higher education, with regard to the strong competition from international institutions.

Combating the main gaps and incompatibilities existing in higher education, supporting individuals in the acquisition and development of skills and competencies essential for their future insertion in the job market is what the project's consortium with the acronym THINK4JOBS - Critical Thinking for Successful Jobs intends to accomplish, led by the University of Western Macedonia and integrated by a team of researchers from UÉ under the coordination of MED Pay's Rita Payan Carreira.

In turn, APPRAISE - governance, quality, accountability: a Piloting Reform PRrocess in kurdistAn region of Iraq, coordinated by the Union of Mediterranean Universities (UNIMED), which UÉ has been part of since 2017, aims to reform the Higher Education System in the region of Kurdistan, Iraq. The project, which is led at UÉ by Soumodip Sarkar, from GAITEC, is based on structural changes in the management of institutions, in improving the capacities of human resources and in the implementation of the Bologna process. Through these changes, project members hope to be able to create greater accessibility to scholarships and programs, such as Erasmus, to generate more mobility opportunities and to promote partnerships with several higher education institutions at national and international level.

Erasmus + is a European Commission program in the fields of Education, Training, Youth and Sport that aims to promote internationalization and European excellence in these areas, as well as to encourage innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship through the promotion of equality, social cohesion and active citizenship.