AERIS aims to build an international, cross-sectoral network to advance atmospheric sciences by improving vertically-resolved atmospheric characterization techniques, including near-surface regions. The project unites European academic and commercial institutions with North and South American partners (LALINET). AERIS enhances measurement techniques, connects international observation programs, and creates opportunities for early warning systems, business innovation, and job creation. The main objective is to advance retrieval capabilities for biogenic and non-biogenic aerosols over South America, enabling data with applications in health, hydrology, air quality, and climate. This will support a regional early warning system with global implications, benefiting aviation, biodiversity, and space mission validation. Specific goals include: (1) Implementing quality assurance and calibration for vertically resolved and near-surface measurements; (2) Optimizing inversion algorithms for aerosol property retrievals; (3) Enhancing synergies between instruments to improve spatial and temporal data; (4) Developing predictive models linking aerosols to health impacts; and (5) Investigating aerosol-induced cloud nucleation and its effects on the hydrological cycle. South America faces critical atmospheric challenges with global consequences. Limited infrastructure and monitoring networks hinder accurate data collection and climate modeling, weakening public policies and international cooperation. AERIS addresses these challenges by integrating high-quality, vertically resolved atmospheric data with near-surface imagery, advancing aerosol characterization in South America. This unique database will strengthen regional and global atmospheric science. To achieve these goals, AERIS includes an ambitious consortium and proposes secondments, workshops, and training activities to foster a shared culture of research and innovation.

"PITCH: Promoting and Implementing Training on entrepreneurship, innovation and Creativity in Higher educationThe project aims at developing innovative teaching and learning approaches for entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation education in Higher Education.Even though in the recent years several entrepreneurship courses have been developed in HEI worldwide, a cross-cutting approach is missing to integrate entrepreneurship in an overarching domain-independent approach.Hence entrepreneurship, in most cases is regarded as a discrete domain or is often connected to business studies or economics only. The aim of PITCH is to introduce entrepreneurship, and with it sense of initiative, creativity and innovation as a ""key competence"" in an overarching approach which can be transferred to a large variety of research fields and study domains in European Higher Education. This will be achieved with the help of an innovative, self-directed (blended) learning approach for students and educational personnel at the interface of Higher Education and business.Entrepreneurial competences are hardly to be acquired in frontal teaching lessons or self-learning exercises.The ideal learning contexts to acquire these competences are the informal/non-formal ones such as learning labs, incubators in combination with internships or mobility. Hence, the PITCH project aims at setting up an innovative blended learning approach, which includes experiential and practical learning in different learning environments.However, it is a challenge to set up learning pathways to facilitate the acquisition of relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes in this rather heterogeneous field. Only singular attempts have been made to systematically include the development of these competences in curricular or extracurricular HE courses. The validation (here the assessment and documentation) of these competences requires an appropriate competence framework system to give evidence of students’ development, to connect them to existing certification systems and to offer a European wide validation approach. PITCH will develop and pilot an approach to tackle this issue based on a long-term partnership of academia, business and educational partners.Based on a sound stocktaking on successful approaches on entrepreneurship education modules and courses it will set up a framework of competences on entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, using on the one hand the EntreComp descriptive framework and on the other hand the LEVEL5 validation system. Both systems have been largely applied in previous EU-funded projects on entrepreneurship education.A modular, blended learning and training approach will be developed combining face-to face, e-learning and practical learning in incubators, in internships and learning in mobility, thus creating interfaces to ERASMUS mobility programmes.The learning and training offers will also be delivered on state-of-the-art learning technologies providing contents, courses, e-portfolios and validation interfaces as open educational resources (OER) for 18 trainers who will transfer the PITCH approach in their trainings in HEI; 12-15 students will carry out a specific study mobility in the framework of an intercultural design thinking programme.The PITCH courses and modules will involve 75 students from six universities in five EU member-states and one candidate country.Students of different sciences will develop PITCH projects along an innovative blended learning concept based on transferrable study units that can be integrated in the formal curricula and on an experiential learning approach in European universities.Competences will be validated and connected to European validation and certification instruments.The PITCH partnership is consisting of HEI from DE, GR, LT, PT which cover a large geographical scope and several cross-cutting disciplines from economics, natural, economic and social sciences.The partnership is completed by a young unversiy spin-off working on innovation management (IT) and a European cooperative with a large European network in the field of competence-oriented learning and validation (DE)."

The ICSE Academy supports the EU’s endeavours to minimize the amount of low-performing STEM (science, maths, technology, engineering) learners. It does so by investing in a new era of a high-quality STEM teacher workforce by innovating based on existing best practices teacher education and transnational exchange strategies. This approach draws on mobility and collaboration as an integral part, thereby supporting young and established STEM teachers across Europe. Unique features of our proposed project are, in a nutshell:•A high-capacity partnership: The ICSE Academy partners are experienced higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, and schools from 13 countries learning with, from and about each other through specific innovative collaborative structures. •Unprecedented professional learning concept with three innovative professional learning formats for pre- and in-service STEM teachers, achieving effectiveness, accessibility and transferability to all Member States and fostering European mobility and collaboration: •Peer-learning through job-shadowing (ITE/CPD providers attend each other’s courses to learn from each other)•Interdisciplinary European workshop series (for teachers across Europe, run jointly by all ITE/CPD providers)•Collaborative European summer schools (in NL/CZ with focus on collaboration between participants as well as organizers)•Distinct needs-feasibility-alignment: The development of our professional learning formats is needs-driven in two ways: (1) Teachers will communicate bottom-up what they need and (2) policy makers will communicate top-down requirements from the policy level.The ICSE Academy will use a systemic approach to inform national and European policy based on a profound policy needs analysis. It will include targeted dissemination/communication and institutionalized exchange structures (e.g. round tables).

At the time when European societies are facing dramatic changes and dealing with complex inter-linked global problems, leading to an unpredictable future with conflicting visions of better society greater attention must be given to the insights Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) could offer, to promote social innovative solutions addressing societal challenges.Insights coming from SSH disciplines/professionals are critical for better and informed practice, especially when talking about sustainable innovations/transformations, or when trying to understand social disruption processes on broader socio-economic environment. The effects of social disruption, brought by the technological innovation, has dramatically affected economy, culture of institutions and changed people’s lives. Being on the verge of 4th industrial revolution, bringing more disruption in our economy, institutions and lives, there is an urgent need for greater attention to be given to SSH-based research which will encourage moving towards sustainable innovations and brighter future.The SHOUT consortium aims to strengthen SSH students and professionals innovation capacity and transformational role of HEIs, SMEs and NGOs when dealing with complex problems presented in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and developing innovative sustainable solutions. To reach this objective, SHOUT alliance will deliver the following results: • three innovative educational programmes (educational materials and webinars) for SSH academics, research support staff, SSH students and SSH professionals.• a replicable research mission-based traineeship scheme and problem-focused learning approach.• a self-sustaining SSH research and innovation HUB for students and professionals.• improve visibility of SSH research and strengthen its impact on broader socio-economic environment.• strengthen collaboration among different sectors, improve networking channels bridging the gap between research and practice.