Last week a consortium lead by the University of Primorska has learned it will be awarded a grant by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Teaming grant instrument. The purpose of the funds is to increase innovation excellence in Europe in general, especially in member states underperforming in innovation. The Commission aims to achieve that by developing or upgrading a Center of Excellence in cooperation with an advanced partner from a high performing and complementary institute elsewhere in Europe. The advanced partner, the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research – Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, will serve as a “tutor” to support the development of the new Center. The University of Primorska has brought together seven other Slovenian institutes and research groups to develop the new Renewable materials and healthy environments research and innovation centre of excellence (InnoRenew CoE). Assistant Professor Andreja Kutnar of the University of Primorska will coordinate the project. The other Slovenian partners are: the University of Maribor, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, the Pulp and Paper Institute, EuroCloud Slovenia, the National Institute of Public Health and the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region. This partnership brings together expertise from a wide variety of disciplines including health, information technology and computing, engineering, construction, urban development, renewable material use and management, and sustainability. The emphasised renewable material will be wood, its products and derivatives in all forms, from solid timber to “green” chemicals and energy. The InnoRenew CoE will built upon the group’s diverse expertise to bring Slovenia to the forefront of the European construction and renewable materials sectors by developing new, smart, sustainable and modern built environments for all generations. The new CoE will pursue original research, provide research, development and innovation support to the industry and undertake an extensive outreach project to promote the use of renewable materials in sustainable development.

With the group now entering phase 1 of the project, they will develop a business plan to successfully implement the new Center of Excellence. This effort will include careful planning and close cooperation between the partners and will ultimately lead to a final version of the plan to create the InnoRenew CoE in Slovenia. The group’s proposal was amongst 31 proposals selected to participate in this phase of the call out of 169 submitted proposals. The 31 groups selected will now compete to be one of the 10 selected to implement their project by the European Commission.

More info: http://ec.europa.eu/research/press/2015/pdf/150130-teaming-project_list.pdf