Industry 4.0 has now extended its focus to a broader set of technologies rather than just CPS, and to the most vital processes included in the product and production systems lifecycle, rather than just to production. In all the dialects where the Industry 4.0 language is spoken, Industrial Internet of Things, Additive Manufacturing and Robotics from the technology side and Mass Customization, Product-Service Systems and Sustainable Manufacturing from the business side always represent key cornerstones and top priority challenges. FASTEN “mission” is to develop, demonstrate, validate, and disseminate an integrated and modular framework for efficiently producing custom-designed products. More specifically, FASTEN will demonstrate an open and standardized framework to produce and deliver tailored-designed products, capable to run autonomously and deliver fast and low cost additive manufactured products. This will be achieved by effectively pairing digital integrated service/products to additive manufacturing processes, on top of tools for decentralizing decision-making and data interchange. Sophisticated software technologies for self-learning, self-optimizing, and advanced control will be applied to build a full connected additive manufacturing system. ThyssenKrupp and Embraer are two of these companies that must overcome challenges of this nature, in order to cope with an increasing demand diversity, products with shorter life cycles, and the need for supplying low volumes per order, requiring flexible solutions capable to effectively manufacture and deliver personalized products.

Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) represent a progression of how cities apply digital technology to serve their populations, pursue sustainable socio-economic development, and transform themselves. The urban development that leads SSC requires a growing number of competencies to work together in order to plan, design, implement and manage the ongoing transformations of the city, enabled by technological innovation. Considering the great attention the concept of SSC has reached in Latin America, our project aims at integrating it into various university courses using new teaching and learning tools, as well as developing new curricula in all levels of education process. Given the increasing number of competencies needed and its interdisciplinary characteristic, the curricula for SSC will be implemented in areas such as ICT, Business Administration, Computer Science, Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism, Urban Planning, Political Science, among others, using a collaborative and international network of selected academic institutions in Latin America and Europe. The main outputs of the project include the development, evaluation and implementation of new courses and programmes on SSC to reach students, policy makers, public managers and other members of the city administration, professionals, managers and entrepreneurs, as well as university faculty that will be trained to apply the developed ICT-based tools to their classes. Besides academic curricula and specialization programmes, the project will provide an e-learning platform filled with a Massive Online Open Course on SSC. The main impacts of the project are to improve the quality of learning and teaching tools, methodologies and pedagogical approaches in the Latin America region, increase the employability and competitiveness of the students, and for the faculty members to increase the quality of their classes by using new learning and teaching tools and new content, as well as promoting life-long learning.

INCOBRA – Increasing Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) International Cooperation between Brazil (BR) and the European Union (EU) – is a 36-month Coordination and Support Action aiming to increase, enhance and focus Research and Innovation (R&I) cooperation between BR and EU. INCOBRA is expected to contribute to (i) Increased cooperation patterns – by supporting cooperation networks among BR and EU R&I actors (Work Package –WP2), (ii) Enhanced framework conditions – by fostering coordination and alignment of R&I funding in BR and EU (WP3), (iii) More focused BR-EU R&I cooperation – by identifying emerging topics and opportunities in priority R&I areas for cooperation (WP1). Capacity building, sustainability will also be fully addressed by INCOBRA (WP4 and WP5, respectively). INCOBRA’s approach is completely aligned with the EU Strategy for International R&I Cooperation, the EU Roadmap for R&I Cooperation with BR, the BR-EU Policy Dialogue priorities and with the work of the Strategic Forum for International STI Cooperation (SFIC). It thus draws upon a multilateral perspective (interests and needs of BR-state level, BR-federal level, EU and EU-Member States), whilst capitalizing and going beyond the outcomes of the previous R&I cooperation project with Brazil (B.BICE+). INCOBRA’s approach also assumes innovation (holistic concept) as a key driver for BR-EU STI cooperation and Strategic Foresight as a relevant tool to anticipate R&I trends of mutual interest for BR and EU R&I actors, while promoting mutual openness of BR and EU R&I funding programmes to encourage cooperation. The INCOBRA consortium comprises 13 partners (7 from EU and 6 from BR), including Universities, Research Organizations, International Organizations, Technology Parks, Private Companies and Funding Agencies. Building upon a stakeholder-driven basis, INCOBRA already incorporates 36 organizations as members of the Stakeholder Group to be deployed during the project.

Climate Labs seeks to strengthen the applied research and innovation capacities of ten partner universities from Mexico, Brazil and Colombia through the design and implementation of Social Innovation Labs for mitigation and adaptation to Climate Change. In a network with Universities from Spain, France, and Italy, plus Ashoka as a non-academic expert partner, the project seeks to build interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder labs that will institutionalize the applied research and innovation for climate change in the territories the partners are inserted. In a term of three years, the project expects to train scholars, students and staff members in Latin America, who will form changemaker leader teams, design and implement labs according to the needs, strengths, challenges and characteristics of the institutions and territories they serve. In this period, each university will also implement a pilot project, get connected with international relevant networks as well as other national institutions, build the physical and virtual infrastructure of the lab, and develop strategies for the sustainability and scalability of the project. The project seeks, ultimately, to build strong and connected areas of innovation and applied research within universities impacting in the overall capacities and strategies of the partner countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.