Through Unite!, leading technological universities define how engineering education will respond to major European challenges

Through Unite!, leading technological universities define how engineering education will respond to major European challenges
+
 Download

Award for the best student co-creation project
One of the essential elements of the Unite! alliance is co-creation that is based on the participation of its students. For this reason, during the Barcelona Dialogue the Unite!4Future programme, which brings together students from the seven universities, will announce the winning project in a competition aimed at students from the seven universities who have collaboratively proposed projects for a new way of teaching in the new European university.

 
International experts

At the 4th Unite! Dialogue, which will include a meeting of rectors from the universities that make up the alliance and the exchange of expertise between the institutions, several international experts will take part in the discussions. One of them is Manuela Battaglini, CEO and co-founder of Transparent Internet and a specialist in digital humanism, who will take part in a debate on ethics and technology moderated by students on 29 November at 5.30 p.m. Battaglini is part of the group of experts appointed by the Spanish government to help define the Spanish Charter of Digital Rights.

Another keynote speaker is Karel Luyben, former rector of the Technical University of Delft and a renowned expert in open science. Luyben will participate in the meeting on 30 November at 11.15 a.m.

Through Unite!, leading technological universities define how engineering education will respond to major European challenges
+
 Download

UPC students in a chemical engineering laboratory

Through Unite!, leading technological universities define how engineering education will respond to major European challenges
+
 Download

The UPC is hosting the 4th Unite! Dialogue, “Past, Present and Future”, from 29 November to 1 December, online and face-to-face in the auditorium of the Vèrtex building

The UPC is hosting the 4th Unite! Dialogue, “Past, Present and Future”, from 29 November to 1 December, online and face-to-face in the auditorium of the Vèrtex building. Experts from the seven European universities that are part of the Unite! alliance, as well as representatives from industry, institutions and governments, will debate the key issues for the future of European development.

Nov 29, 2021

More than 200 people, including representatives from industry, students, faculty, European university strategy makers and governments, will meet online and in person in the auditorium of the Vèrtex building (Plaça Eusebi Güell, 6, Barcelona) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) for the 4th Unite! Dialogue, “Past, Present and Future”. This gathering allows the community to continue shaping the Unite! alliance, which brings together some of Europe’s best technological universities. Beyond aspects such as student mobility and the degrees recognised by the seven universities, experts of different nationalities will reflect on how engineering education should evolve, the ethics in technology, European leadership in smart technologies and the impact that the Unite! alliance has on European higher education and on local, regional and global development. In fact, one of the novelties of the meeting is a day in which universities, industry, governments and society will discuss how to intensify the transformative capacity of technological universities in society.


The Unite! community—the European University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering—is made up of the UPC, the Technical University of Darmstadt, Aalto University, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Grenoble INP’s graduate schools of engineering and management (University Grenoble Alpes), the Politecnico di Torino and the Universidade de Lisboa. The aim of the meeting is to share ideas and learn from best practices in the fields of teaching and research, on which the Unite! alliance is already working, in order to build the European university of the future.


Registration is required to attend the Branding Event virtually, which will be open to everyone, and in person. The event takes place on 1 December.

 

Building the European university of the future

The development of the new generation of engineering and architecture professionals, the construction of an interuniversity metacampus, the development of more flexible and inclusive Europe-wide integrated mobility, the programming of a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and the creation of a joint doctoral school between the seven universities are some of the initiatives on which multidisciplinary groups of researchers, students, faculty and Unite! staff are working. Ethics, sustainability, multilingualism, gender equality, co-creation, entrepreneurship and open science are some of the values on which the alliance for this great European university is based and which is decisively linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
Over the last two years, Unite! has promoted different activities and training proposals for students, researchers and academics. Master’s degrees, summer universities, international hackathons and training in teaching innovation for teachers have concentrated a large part of the most high-profile activities.
A network for innovation, technology and engineering
The alliance is part of a strategic commitment to increasing the quality and attractiveness of higher education in Europe. Its members are creating a common space for multidisciplinary training and cooperation in teaching, research and knowledge transfer with a view to regional development. Technology and innovation are the factors in common.

Together, the seven partners have around 167,000 students, of which approximately 36,700 graduate each year. They cooperate closely on more than 80 EU projects and have exchanged more than 2,000 students in the last five years.

In 2019, the European Commission (EC) proposed the European Universities Initiative to promote the creation of the European Education Area by 2025. Unite! is one of the main alliances to respond to this challenge, which is to make European universities more competitive and for them to attract talent and act as agents for knowledge transfer to other continents, such as Asia or America, in a global world.

The EC promotes and funds these alliances through the Erasmus+ Framework Programme and Science with and for Society, in the Horizon 2020 programme.

A new concept for education and research
Unite! shares, pools and complements the teaching capacities of each university. It is a new kind of European university for which flexible study pathways and joint curricula are already being designed. Unite! is leading in particular with the creation of new concepts for education and research in engineering, science and technology based on innovative transdisciplinary approaches derived from art, design, architecture, business, social sciences and the humanities. All of this is aimed at training a new generation of highly qualified European professionals to meet the challenges of the labour market, by providing them with multidisciplinary and high-quality training.

Innovation in three strategic areas
With the intention of tackling some of Europe’s great social challenges, the Unite! alliance is promoting an integrated research and innovation strategy that focuses on three major areas: energy, Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence. This strategy is developed in line with the policies of the European Green Deal and the European Digital Agenda.