The I EELISA R&I InnoCORE symposium took place last week on 16 May, together with the first EELISA Research-Based Learning Symposium. Research and innovation experts met at ITU in Istanbul to discuss how to deepen collaboration in research, innovation and entrepreneurship across the Alliance.
Participants had the opportunity to get to know better how EELISA partners organise their research support services and structures, particularly regarding the support offered for applying for international calls and management of R&I projects. The support offered to researchers —e.g. regarding IPR management, legal and financial issues, or aspects such as open science— is key when encouraging researchers to apply for external funds. Therefore, learning from each other and joining forces will prove key to promoting joint research at EELISA-level.
A panel was also dedicated to performing an in-depth analysis of how the different EELISA partner’s innovation ecosystems are structured. This was complemented by a visit to ITU’s start-up incubator and science park, with presentations by ITU entrepreneurship support experts.
The symposium resulted in productive exchanges on questions such as the following: How can research and entrepreneurship methods be best used in higher education? The use of research methodologies in the classroom, i.e. research-based learning (RBL), has been gaining importance over the world and it is a method used by teachers all over EELISA. Likewise, universities are giving increasing importance to helping students develop an entrepreneurial mindset or, rather (as it was discussed during the symposium) a change-maker mindset.
The event included a joint workshop with the alliance’s EIT HEI project EELISA Unfolds, which provided participants with a forum for discussing the complementarities between these three pillars of EELISA via its different components: education, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
EELISA-InnoCORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 R & I programme under GA No. 101035811