Research Group Focus Map

ECIU University
SMART-ER

Research at ECIU UNIVERSITY

The ECIU University has developed a long-term joint research strategy on smart regions, building on the rapid development of digital infrastructures across Europe.

The ECIU University research strategy is aimed at addressing complex research challenges related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11): “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. At ECIU University research is challenge-based, use-inspired. More importantly, it is team-based research, and the universities work closely with partners from industry, government and civil society.

Therefore, to implement the research strategy, the ECIU University is creating a SMART-ER Virtual Research Institute, which is a framework for joint research, enabling all 12 ECIU University members to work together on the topics related to SDG 11.

Moreover, many areas within the broad scope of research, connected to SDG 11 topics, require efforts from many stakeholders – such as digital transformations to low-urbanized areas or implementing different services for mobility and transport.

Therefore, ECIU partners distinguish two cross-cutting concerns that will need to be addressed to make these transformations successful: human capital and co-creation, including interdisciplinarity. These two themes underpin the ECIU University research and innovation agenda and the SMART-ER activities.

Long-term joint research strategylearn more
Graphic visualising all people working on the smarter project in numbers

ECIU UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FIELDS

Energy and Sustainability

1. Climate-resilient energy sector

2. Encouragement to the producers to decrease the virgin raw materials consumption

3. Renewable sources of energy & integration of renewables in the energy system

4. Decarbonization of the power sector toward net-zero emission by 2020

5. Whole life cycle analysis.

6. The role of civil society and social movements in energy transitions

7. Social sustainability in the logistic sector and resource depletion for manufacturing processes

8. Citizen engagement targeting bringing the public on as a champion of research in this area to help "motivate" political policy

9. Embodied energy of products

10. Smart design of optimal and reliable energy systems

11. Reliability and Safety Study of Energy Systems

12. International provision chains for renewable energies

13. Energy storage

14. Transformative innovation perspectives

15. Resilient any-scenario communication networks 

Research Field Coordinator

research field coordinator Nelson Amadeu Dias Martins 
Nelson Amadeu Dias Martins 
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Researcher of TEMA (Centre for Mechanical Technology and Automation) and LASI (Intelligent Systems Associate Laboratory) University of Aveiro, Portugal

Research interests
Sustainable energy systems and a focus on heat transfer, nanofluids, CFD and energy system analysis.

Experience and current work:
Portuguese Delegate to the EU Energy Committee and an expert on energy certification systems in buildings and industry; an expert on the International Protocol for the Measurement and Verification of Energy Performance; a senior member of the Portuguese Engineering Society and the Portuguese Metrology Society, the Portuguese Society of Qualified Experts and the International Association of Energy Engineers; teaches subjects in the field of thermal and fluids with a focus on applied thermodynamics, refrigeration, air conditioning and energy management.

ECIU Intro Video to Energy and Sustainability

Circular Economy

1. Reuse (and recycling) of challenging waste fractions, such as multimaterials/composites and critical materials in the European context

2. Development of biological, thermal, physical and chemical technologies for resource recovery.

3. Investigate the impact of consumer behavioural change on the environmental, economic, and social aspects of a product's life-cycle.

4. Circular oriented innovation

5. Disassembling of product at end of life for component reusage

6. Development of products for circular economy

7. Effects of legislation and business models on circular economy solutions and the drivers and barriers regarding legislation at national and EU level.

8. Materials, such as Polymers, Construction materials and critical raw materials

9. Acceptance of different solutions, e.g. markets for nutrient products recovered from waste streams.

10. Execution and implementation of circular economy principles within an organization

11. Recovery of resources, e.g. nutrients, metals, carbon and/or energy, from industrial, municipal and agricultural waste streams

12. How to integrate CE-thinking into the development work (for example C2C innovation and stage-gate innovation work)

13. Circular construction

14. Sustainable exploitation of mineral raw materials (no more mining wastes; integral use of low-grades)

15. Food waste recycling and food waste valorization

Research Field Coordinator

research Field Coordinator Dr. Fernando Vilariño
Gopalakrishnan Kumar
Associate Professor
Institute of Chemistry, Bioscience and Environmental Engineering,
University of Stavanger, Norway

Research interests
Biofuel/biochemical & biopolymer production/valorisation from lignocellulose/organic waste/wastewater and algal biomass via biorefinery (Fermentation, Anaerobic digestion) and Microbial fuel/electrolysis cell (MFC& MEC) technologies.

Experience and current work:
>10 years profound knowledge and experience on various sustainable technologies towards circular economy aspect; PI/Co-PI on various projects related to circular economy; working on application of green synthesized activated carbon and Nano particles towards various environmental remediation applications (Lab Site); involved in Sustainability and Circular Economy Research Cluster (ScERC) in University of Stavanger towards an interdisciplinary connection between academy, industry and society.

ECIU Intro Video to Circular Economy

Transport and Mobility

1. Autonomous Driving and Smart Mobility. Create Methods for Multi-Sensors based Road Scene Analysis.

2. Artificial intelligence to mobility and transport prediction

3. Artificial Intelligence for Logistics Management

4. Urban transport in post covid era

5. Zero-emission public transportation

6. Smart design of optimal and reliable systems

7. Shareconomy in logistics (uberization of trucking, car sharing, crowdsourced logistics, platform, etc.).

8. Fully integrated multi-modal mobility options with transportation delay predictions and mobility apps from public administrations

9. Electric vehicles

10. Better use of travel card data for optimization

11. Sharing and utilization of real-time data in supply chains

12. Development and evaluation of integrated concepts in mobility and land use planning

13. Digitalisation of urban transport (shared mobility, mobility as a service), and its societal impacts

14. Walkability and emotions in urban environments

15. Bikeability – from car-dependency to soft mobility

Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Maria Huge-Brodin
Maria Huge-Brodin
Professor
Logistics and Quality Management, Department of Management and Engineering

Leader
Climate Smart Freight Transport Research Group Linköping University, Sweden

Resilient Communities

1. Trade-offs between resilience and equity/justice

2. Co-creation of practices facilitating resilient communities

3. Social health of communities & social capital (social networks, social trust, reciprocity norms)

4. Citizen participation

5. Employ scenario-building to stimulate community engagement in community engagement in co-creating sustainable and smart communities.

6. Renewable energy production balanced with consumption in a localised community-focused manner

7. Power relations in a resilient community: between members, between community and authorities, between community and society more in general

8. Urban infrastructures risks due to extreme events => nature-based solutions

9. Building on a broad range of stakeholder/community/professional experiences to ensure dealing with the most difficult problem for sustainability

10. How to promote the reuse and adaptation of the built stock to both climate change and social change

11. Analysis of how city-regions are emerging as key contexts for building resilient urban futures

12. Collective action problems associated with community adaptation and resilience

13. Hybrid governance solutions that involve communities, governments and market-based arrangements

14. Multimodality in urban resilient transport systems (car, cycling, shared mobility, public transport)

15. Citizen science/crowd-sourced science

Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Raúl Castaño
Raúl Castaño
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Built Environment Tampere University, Finland
SMART-ER Resilient Communities website

Citizen Science

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Research Field Coordinator

Research Field Coordinator Dr. Fernando Vilariño
Fernando Vilariño
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science

Associate Director
Computer Vision Centre Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Research interests
Computer vision and machine learning with a particular focus on medical imaging.

Experience and current work:
Current Elected President of the European Network of Living Labs; awarded with the Spanish Gov. Ramon y Cajal Grant (2010) and Google Academy Award (2014) for his research; led different projects related to the implementation of models of Living Labs in the context of citizen-centric Open Innovation; coordinates Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ECIU Communities of Citizen Science; gives lectures in “Machine Learning”, “Robotics”, “Urban Open Innovation” and “Models of Open Innovation and Citizen Science”.


ECIU Intro Video to Citizen Science
See full ECIU University long-term joint research strategy here

About ECIU Smart-ER

ECIU SMARTER Video thumbnail
The ECIU University Research Institute for Smart European Regions (SMART-ER) is a research, innovation and education strong alliance, enabling all 12 ECIU University member institutions to jointly address complex societal challenges under the framework of the UN SDG11 (Sustainable cities and communities).

The SMART-ER is a new model of research and innovation, based on a virtual collaborative environment, will call scientists and researchers of the member universities for joint research initiatives and project activities. The SMART-ER together with diverse stakeholder groups at a local, national and international level, will promote the dialogue with society and will work according to a shared Research and Innovation (R&I) Agenda.

Jointly, the institutions piloted capacity building programmes (Seed Programme and SMART-ER Academy) and citizen science initiatives that will were used as a testbed to put into practice all the mechanisms and structures built.

The SMART-ER project is implemented under European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement #101016888

SMART-ER Deliverables

SMART-ER Academy

The SMART-ER Academy aims to offer a novel approach of training-capacity programmes that goes beyond the conventional praxis and comfort zone. This involves researchers from all their professional stages (from R1 to R4) in stimulating training, based on the ECIU University challenge-based learning approach (CBL), focusing the activities on relevant topics and addressing genuine local and regional challenges.

Under this framework, the task aims at generating a knowledge cloud, equipping researchers and other research staff with a combination of training skills, forward-looking competencies, Open Science skills, research integrity, interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial competencies. It also includes further development in non-academic settings with the collaboration of non-academic experts.

Two training programmes are designed under the SMART-ER Academy:

Online PhD Training Programme.

This fully on-line programme aims to train PhD researchers with the skills needed to face an unpredictable and changeable future. It will include skills in alignment with the EC Innovative Doctoral Training Principles (IDTP), the New Skills Agenda and the Modernisation Agenda and based on the challenge-based learning approach.
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Open Science & Leadership Blended-Training Programme.

The programme combines on-line interaction and traditional placed-based activities. It will provide SMART-ER researcher-leaders with the skills able to tackle the challenges of leading multidisciplinary research teams and networks of researchers. Training will also be provided to upgrade researcher-leaders’ skills in preparing project proposals, in holding workshops with the possibility of “pre-proposal preparation” events or “pitch-the-project-idea events”, and also to draw up a specific lists of potential project-funding programmes beyond the upcoming Horizon Europe.
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Research Maps

Click on a research area to get more information on the topics and the contact person for each.

SMART-ER Seed Programme

The Seed Programme supports initiatives focused in three main directions:

1
2
3
picture about Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

This action aims to promote an increasing new generation of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative ECIU early-stage researchers, able to face current and future societal challenges.
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two researchers discussing

Blended mobility
to create networks

This action promotes inter-institutional collaboration through blended exchanging of research and innovation SMART-ER staff to create new networks or leverage existing networks aimed at contributing to SDG 11.
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participant of smart-er seed project

SMART-ER Seed Projects

This action promotes high-quality research outputs within SMART-ER through the funding of inter-institutional and inter-sectoral research and innovation Seed projects directly linked to the SDG11 challenges defined under ECIU University.
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PROJECTS FUNDED
BY SMART-ER SEED PROGRAMME

Digital Media Network DoctoralExperience (DiMeNDx)

ECIU University has created an optimal ecosystem for the development of networks to promote collaboration and progress in research, education and innovation closely connected with the design and evaluation of digital services and platforms as tools and solutions for challenges related with SGD11 goals associated with resilient communities. This project will promote the establishment of a network that will foster and increase collaboration in research initiatives as well as joint supervision of PhD students within the field of Digital Media among ECIU University members that will contribute to the improvement of UX, Usability and Accessibility of solutions used to reach the goals established by the UN in the resilient communities context.

Research Area
Resilient Communities
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro,
Rui Manuel de Assunção Raposo
Partner institution
Lodz University of Technology
University of Trento Dublin City
University Linköping University
Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Type of Action
Blended mobility to create networks

Efficient and Sustainable Refrigeration Systems Integrating Heat Storage Materials and Radiative Cooling (ESRS-HSRC)

Domestic refrigeration equipment, widely used for food preservation, represents 17% of global energy use. The use of renewable energy sources and the arrival of smart grids are at the lead of fighting climate change. To fully deploy their potential, a distributed network of energy-storage facilities is required, and refrigeration systems have massive potential to be it. Integration into refrigeration facilities of enhanced energy-storage ability and innovative control strategies will be an energy efficiency breakthrough.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro,
Fernando José Neto da Silva
Partner institution
Aalborg University
Type of Action
Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

Array Signal Processing for Water Leak Detection (ASPWLD)

It has been estimated that in many water distribution networks worldwide, water loss can frequently exceed 30% of the input volume due to leaks or pipe breaks resulting from holes, deterioration, and damages. The doctoral project aims at developing a device, termed seismic camera, which allows to locate the direction of the noise sources generated from water leaks. This is a 2D array of 3-axis geophones distributed on the ground in the vicinity of a suspected leak to localise and quantify water leaks with significantly greater accuracy and reliability than conventional methods.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability
Coordinator institution
Università degli Studi di Trento, Emiliano Rustighi
Partner institution
Institut National des Sciences Appliquées – Lyon
Insa Lyon Logo
Type of Action
Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

Development of high capacity hydrogen fuel tank prototype for vehicular applications (DHCPHV)

Considering the importance of raising awareness regarding clean energy transition in the society, we plan to develop a hydrogen powered device prototype and demonstrate it to the important stakeholders of civil society in our locality. Initially, a set of high capacity hydrogen storage materials, “reactive hydride composites (RHC)”, (1-x)MgH2 + xTiH2 +2LiBH4, where x = 0-1 yields 8.1-10.3 wt.% H2 will be tested in the laboratory. From these tests the best RHC sample which satisfies the universal hydrogen storage capacity target (>6.5 wt.%) for commercialization will be optimized.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro, D.Pukazhselvan
Partner institution
University of Trento
Aalborg University
Type of Action
SMART-ER Seed Projects

Sustainable and Dependable AI (SuDAI)

AI is more and more present in our daily life. The potential of neural networks is exploited in various domains, from physics simulations, stock market prediction, social media, and autonomous vehicles. Despite the tautological benefits of AI, the training and the interference of modern Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) is extremely computational demanding. As a result, a significant amount f energy is required to take advantage of current neural network models. Novel hardware/software approaches are urgently needed to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of AI frameworks. Some existing solutions reduced the power consumption by using low-power accelerators, reducing operation precision, or skipping operations.

Research Area
Circular economy, Energy and sustainability
Coordinator institution
University of Twente,
Marco Ottavi
Partner institution
University of Trento
Type of Action
Co-tutelle ofdoctoral students and industrial doctorates

Reversing Inequalities and Promoting Solidarity in Health at the European Level: Towards a Research Network on the European Health Union (RN4EUHEALTH)

The COVID-19 pandemic, increasing chronic diseases prevalence and the climate crisis have set a challenge to address inequalities and rethink the possibilities of promoting solidarity in health at the European level. RN4EUHEALTH will enhance building a research network on the European Health Union (EHU) – a key initiative for health emergency and disaster preparedness.

Research Area
Resilient communities
Coordinator institution
Dublin City University,
Volkan Yilmaz
Partner institution
Tampere University
Autonomous University of Barcelona
University of Aveiro
Type of Action
Blended mobility to create networks

BrownBin - Household food waste new life under sustainable cities: a feasibility study (BrownBin)

BrownBin project proposes to develop a household waste bin containing a low-cost biodegradable superabsorbent polymer able to desiccate the wasted organic matter. This allows to prevent further degradation of food waste, reducing the volume and weight of the waste and decreasing the periodicity that the citizens require for its emptiness. The release of off-flavours will be mitigated. For convenience, the bin will have two separated compartments, one for the organic matter and another one for undifferentiated waste.

Research Area
Circular economy
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro,
Manuel A. Coimbra
Partner institution
Kaunas University of Technology
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
University of Trento
Type of Action
SMART-ER Seed Projects

Erasmus Sustainable Mobility

In its 2021-2027 period, the Erasmus program is expected to move 10 million European students. These students however will have significantly larger carbon footprints during their stay abroad than when studying back at home. On the other hand, most international students will make intensive use of public transportation, bike sharing systems (BSS) or other sustainable travel options on their day-to-day activities during their stays, offsetting some of their carbon emissions.

Research Area
Transport and mobility, Energy and sustainability
More about the project
Coordinator institution
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona,
Oriol Marquet Sardà
Partner institution
Aveiro University
Aalborg University
Type of Action
SMART-ER Seed Projects
Coordinator institution
Kaunas University of Technology,
Dmytro Volyniuk
Partner institution
Linköping University
Tampere University
Labkicosmos
Type of Action
SMART-ER Seed Projects

Interface-friendly hole-transporting materials for low-cost and stable perovskite solar cells

Our consortium aims to develop cost-efficient HTMs and investigate the fundamental and applied aspects of perovskite/HTM/metal interfaces in relation to device stability. The overall aim of T-i-PSCer project is to boost the scientific excellence and innovation capacity of three ECIU universities and their non-academic partner in developing interface-friendly HTMs for stable PSCs with the commercial potential.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability
More about the project
Coordinator institution
Linköping University,
Tina Schmid Neset
Partner institution
University of Stavanger
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
University of Twente
Type of Action
SMART-ER Seed Projects

ECIU Urban Transformation Collaboratory

This project brings together academic and societal partners from 4 ECIU institutes, building on established collaboration with focus on societal transformation, citizen engagement, viable and smart cities. ECIU-UTC is drawing on a palette of local and regional challenges that are jointly defined with societal partners in Norrköping/Linköping, Stavanger, Enschede, and Barcelona, aiming to achieve SDG11 – sustainable cities and communities, and to the ECIU ‘SuperBlock of Covadonga’ challenge.

Research Area
Resilient communities, Transport and mobility, Energy and sustainability
More about the project
Coordinator institution
University of Aveiro,
Ana Dias Daniel
Partner institution
University of Twente
Dublin City University
Kaunas University of Technology
Linköping University
Tampere University
Type of Action
Research network on resilient communities

Research network on resilient communities

The RESILIENT project aims at building a Research Network on Resilient Communities through i) the development of a collaborative net of researchers for knowledge exchange and capacity building between network partners; ii) forge new multi- and interdisciplinary research and training initiatives on critical aspects of resilient communities undertaken by the network members in collaboration; iii) encourage the dialogue between academia and civil society through citizen science approaches, which is needed to enhance the resilience of local communities in practice.

Research Area
Resilient communities
More about the project
Coordinator institution
Kaunas University of Technology,
Viktorija Varaniūtė
Partner institution
Linköping University
Tampere University
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Type of Action
Blended mobility to create networks

Interdisciplinary Networking for a Sustainable and Circular Economy

Peter Drucker (1909-2005) once stated that “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” The circular economy is a concept that has been shown to have great merits in mobilizing many different actors and professional groups to contribute to a more effective and resource-efficient, sustainable and circular society. Thus, the vision of this project is to create an interdisciplinary network for a sustainable and circular economy focusing on effective solutions and how to make them efficient from a societal perspective.

Research Area
Circular economy
More about the project

Digital Twins for Energy Optimization

Departing from Internet of Things (IoT) approaches, our work aims at narrowing down this gap, leveraging Machine Learning (ML) for pattern recognition and data analytics, towards more informed decision-making on buildings’ energy optimization. Our goal is to join expertise and expand availability of infrastructure, enabling case studies in both Lithuania and Sweden where we will demonstrate the effective application of our tools.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability
More about the project
Coordinator institution
Kaunas University of Technology,
Darius Pupeikis
Partner institution
Linköping University
Type of Action
Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

Sustainable biological management of nitrogenous liquid streams from air emission control

To reduce environmental impact of flue gases, efficient purification technologies are widely adopted and some of them transfer the pollutants to water phase. The liquid effluents from gas cleaning may thus result in water pollution requiring new management processes. This research aims at developing a specific process for the purification of these effluents, focusing on the removal of nitrogen originated by NOx removal via optimized biological denitrification.

Research Area
Energy and sustainability, Circular economy
More about the project
Coordinator institution
Tampere University,
Jaakko Puhakka
Partner institution
University of Trento
Type of Action
Co-tutelle of doctoral students and industrial doctorates

ResearchEr Mobility Fund

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Citizen Science

Citizen Science, together with the integration of the stakeholders in the different processes of the research cycle, is a fundamental pillar of the SMART-ER project. 

Particularly, SMART-ER devotes a whole work package (WP5), which defines specific actions to develop a strong community of Citizen Science in the ECIU University. These actions are distributed in 3 tasks:

1
The development of a platform for supporting Citizen Science projects.
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2
The coordination of 2 pilots onCitizen Science with the participation of the ECIU universities during the length of the project, starting in Spring 2022.
3
The definition of a document for recommendation and guidelines for the development of Citizen Science projects.

In order to help consolidating a strong Community of Citizen Science, the ECIU Consortium organized a number of open webinars from September 2021. These webinars showcase the state-of-the-art of Citizen Science projects in the different Universities of the ECIU Consortium, and it well contribute to approach common challenges and topics of interest with the view on the identification of potential joint efforts for the pilots.

In addition, with the aim of co-designing the pilots with the ECIU's Community of Citizen Science, a CO-CREATION WORKSHOP was organized in FEBRUARY, 2022.


SMART-ER Series of Webinars on Citizen Science

Engaging the Community of Citizen Science researchers and practitioners at ECIU University.
The webinars will be recorded and published, and they can be accessed through eciu.org
see all webinars

Public Engagement

SMART-ER aims to integrate public engagement in all the activities led by the VRI and to facilitate processes related to engaging all the different stakeholders of society in the research process.

We define public engagement as participatory multi actor dialogues and exchanges to foster mutual understanding, co-create research and innovation outcomes, and provide input to policy agendas.

Engaging with its various publics is of increasing importance to higher education in Europe and globally. It allows the sector to strengthen relevance, responsiveness and accountability in a sustainable manner.


The areas of intervention include:

  • Public sector: local, national and regional authorities, regional health care providers, European networks, cultural and sporting bodies, etc.
  • Private sector: industry/enterprise engagement, industry associations and chambers of commerce, public private partnerships (eg in health or transport), etc).
  • Civil society: community-based organisations (CBOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens assemblies, neighbourhood associations, etc.
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Find your colleagues involved in this community so far here

You are a researcher or staff member of an ECIU university and you have first-hand experience or interest in engagement methods and in developing further methods for doing research?  Join the community and participate to our future events by filling this registration form.

These are examples of activities that you can engage in by participating in this ECIUPublic Engagement Community of Practice:

  • develop engagement methods to enhance the ability of ECIU University to engage with society;
  • share best practices across the SMART-ER Institute;
  • provide support and expertise to the processes related to public engagement for the SMART-ER Institute and your institution.

SMART-ER Webinar Series on Public Engagement and Community of Practice

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