Launched in 2018, the European Universities initiative is geared toward developing shared learning and teaching formats and creating new forms of collaboration in education, research and technology transfer. It has now also become an integral part of the Erasmus Programme and is designed to strengthen cohesion in Europe as well as make the European Higher Education Area more competitive on the international stage.
“Securing continued funding for NeurotechEU represents a major success for the University of Bonn, for all the research, teaching and administrative staff working on this project, and for all the students involved,” says Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Hoch, Rector of the University of Bonn. “The European Universities initiative is an extremely prestigious flagship project whose resonance extends well beyond Europe’s own borders. Having worked to lay the organizational and structural foundations for our partnership over the past three years, we will now be focusing our attention in the second phase more closely on introducing joint degree programs and lifelong learning courses.”
Neurotechnologies supported by artificial intelligence (AI) are set to make up more of NeurotechEU’s content in Phase II. By incorporating specialist expertise from various disciplines and promoting transdisciplinary research, NeurotechEU will help to uncover new insights into how the brain works and devise solutions for neurological disorders and illnesses.
“What we’ve achieved together with our partners over the past three years goes well beyond your standard internationalization projects,” explains Prof. Dr. Birgit Ulrike Münch, Vice Rector for International Affairs at the University of Bonn. “The vision of networks of universities spanning Europe that Emmanuel Macron outlined in his 2017 ‘Sorbonne speech’ has the potential to bring about a lasting transformation in Europe’s higher-education landscape, and the University of Bonn is proud to be part of this groundbreaking development.”
NeurotechEU’s administrative and academic project managers based in Bonn are also delighted by the success. “We now need to work even more closely together, generate more synergy effects and thus inject some significant momentum into neurosciences and neurotechnologies, both in Bonn and across Europe,” says Prof. Dr. Ilona Grunwald Kadow, Academic Director in the NeurotechEU project management team.
There are a total of 50 European Universities with over 430 higher-education institutions involved across 35 countries. NeurotechEU is an alliance between nine leading European universities (Radboud Universiteit, Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche, Karolinska Institutet, the University of Bonn, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, Universitatea de Medicină și Farmacie „Iuliu Hațieganu” din Cluj-Napoca, Debreceni Egyetem, Université de Lille and Reykjavik University) and more than 250 partners from industry, academia and civil society. This network of excellence offers an ideal platform for delivering multidisciplinary, intersectoral and personalized training for bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students in Europe while also promoting lifelong learning in all areas of society.
More information about NeurotechEU and the progress made by the project can be found on its official website: NeurotechEU (uni-bonn.de). https://www.neurotecheu.uni-bonn.de/en/neurotecheu?set_language=en
The results of the European Commission’s selection process are available here: 50 European Universities to cooperate across borders and disciplines | European Education Area (europa.eu). https://education.ec.europa.eu/news/european-universities-2023-call-results