This project seeks to make an important contribution to the waste management education in Sri Lanka. This is an area that requires urgent attention and where new courses at bachelor and master level are needed. By developing new interdisciplinary programmes and redesigning existing programmes, the Sri Lankan HEIs will offer up-to-date, student-centred programmes with increased focus on employability. In total,2 new programmes will be developed a the master’s level. In addition 3 programmes will be redesigned, at bachelor's level.In order to achieve the biggest impact possible action will be taken on several fronts: by establishing and revamping courses, training workshops for teachers, digital learning, close attention to increased recruitment of female students, cooperation with industry, inclusion of local municipalities as associated partners and intensive dissemination and exploitation activities. These combined activities will build the capacity at the HEIs in waste management, providing advisory services to municipalities and companies, raise the international profile of the institutions and develop the capacity of staff involved in the project for conducting high-quality teaching and research.Future graduates will be equipped to tackle the waste management challenges Sri Lanka faces and to improve living conditions for the average citizen and create new jobs.This is in line with institutional and national needs, European priorities and UN Development Goals.The project team has been assembled based on their expertise and interest for these topics. Experts from the field of Business Management and Engineering have been brought together in order to achieve a more comprehensive approach to the issue of waste management.

Among many communities in the EU and beyond, disasters pose significant concerns and challenges, and are an issue that requires international cooperation and solutions. In the last three decades, records of natural disasters show that Asia experiences the most disasters. A major contributory factor to disaster risk is capacity. Capacity development is a widely recognised priority in the disaster resilience field, and research cooperation can provide significant opportunities for realising its benefits. Strengthening the capacity of countries in Asia to do and use research is widely viewed as vital for meeting long term innovation in creating disaster resilience societies. ASCENT (Advancing Skill Creation to ENhance Transformation) aims to ensure that the targeted HEIs in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand have the research and innovative capacities to tackle the challenges associated with developing societal resilience to disasters. ASCENT will: 1) identify research and innovative capacity needs across partner country HEIs to tackle the development of societal resilience to disasters; 2) develop research infrastructure to support implementation of the project and provide sustainable capacity development within the partner HEIs ; 3) prepare researchers in the identified Asian countries to undertake advanced, world-class and innovative, multi- and inter-disciplinary research that will contribute to increased societal resilience to disasters; 4) Increase international cooperation by partner HEIs on research programmes that tackle ways to increase societal resilience to disasters; 5) explore, promote and initiate opportunities for fruitful university / industry partnerships to increase societal resilience to disasters; and 6) publicise the project progress, successes and outcomes as far as possible, and raise awareness across the field of HE about capacity building for disaster resilience research.

The TEAL2.O project is implemented by a consortium of 11 universities – 3 in Sri Lanka, 3 in India, 2 in Thailand, 3 in Europe, joined by a consultancy company. 1 higher education network in Sri Lanka and 6 PC Universities support us as associated partners. Improving access to Science and Technology (S&T) higher education is top priority in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Increasing Gross Enrollment Ratios and reaching underrepresented and disadvantaged groups requires investing serious effort into Open and Distance Learning (ODL). Yet, ODL and increased access, especially in resource-poor institutions, pose many quality-related challenges resulting from shortages of expertise, technological equipment, collaboration and internationalization. We aim to contribute to addressing these challenges and facilitate access to higher education through a comprehensive technological solution. We will develop and deploy an open-access platform for technology-enabled learning environment that will enable the design and delivery of quality ODL in S&T higher education. The TEAL2.O platform will have the following benefits:- modularity and full customizability, allowing institutions and faculty to design programs and develop teaching content that suit local needs and constraints, including those of underrepresented learners- unlimited possibilities for collaborative learning and teaching, allowing institutions to pool available expertise and support quality- learner-centred education, flexible learning pathways and co-creation on the part of learners- open source hardware and software integrated into the learning process to maximize learners’ exposure to technology and provide access to virtual labs and experimentationWe will train staff, faculty and students to use and develop the platform, and will establish 8 university Centres to provide user support and promote the exploitation of TEAL2.O, in the long run helping it to grow into a self-sustainable learning network.

Sri Lanka faces many transportation challenges. Constraints such as timely access to modern technology and the lack of appropriately trained personnel have contributed to increasing social, economic and environmental concerns around road safety, pollution and transport inefficiencies. We will address these issues through enrichment of the university curricula. Specifically, the integration of LBS into ITS. LBS deliver information based on the location of objects. Smart transportation is therefore an ideal LBS application since it is based on locating people (e.g. using smartphones) and objects (e.g. cars, trains, etc.). As LBS evolve rapidly, there is an increasing need to train the next generation of skilled professionals who can leverage these new capabilities. This is important for Sri Lanka, where population growth and resource constraints demand the urgent use of emerging technologies to secure the safety and sustainability of their society. This level of education is in its infancy and cannot rapidly deliver the knowledge inputs required to change transport management decision-making. The consortium of 3 EU and 4 Sri Lankan Universities will build a fully immersive and integrated teaching and learning experience. The outcome will be a digital learning environment supporting synthetic and real-world learning experiences encouraging self-paced learning modules for both teacher and students. It will contain digital resource kits for interaction with modern equipment, continuous assessment and two-way feedback. Webinars and virtual experiences will underpin real-world Problem-based Learning (PBL) scenarios. A key novelty will be inclusion of industry representatives and external experts in the advisory groups. These will support our dissemination and quality control initiatives, the relevance of the PBL and student learning outcomes. Mentorship and a focus on cultural awareness, gender equity and social parity will govern our principles for curricula enrichment.

The proposed project aims at development of joint curricular modules on 'Building Resilience in Tropical Agro-Ecosystems - (BRITAE) in Sri Lankan universities in order to increase their capacity to continually modernize, enhance the quality and relevance of education of students to the global market needs and to ensure international cooperation in line with the above needs.