ETICA, Center for Ethics in Public Affairs at the American University of Armenia, under the direction of ERA Chair Professor Maria Baghramian, will become a national hub for analysing and researching key ethical issues in the public sphere. ETICA will carry out its activities under the four pillars of Research and Internationalisation, Training and Capacity Building, Outreach and Public Engagement, and Structural Reform, focusing on the following objectives: to internationalise research through a collaborative research project on Trust and Hope in a Time of Poly-crises; to create long-term research and training resources in ethics in public affairs; to offer training opportunities in professional, applied and research ethics; to engage the public in participatory deliberations on key ethical issues; to generate policy briefs informed by its theoretical, empirical and participatory findings; to encourage reform in research management at institutional and sectoral levels; and to assist in strengthening international research funding applications. ETICA will have a lasting impact on the development of research and training in public ethics in a small country with limited resources. By recruiting an excellent team of researchers, the Center will also contribute to revitalizing research and publication in the humanities. Through its training and capacity building activities, ETICA will promote the development of codes of professional conduct in research and governance. By engaging with the general public, in the course of town halls, youth juries and deliberative mini publics, ETICA will strengthen the practice of open and reasoned discourse on issues of public significance in a post-Soviet country steadily moving towards democratisation. ETICA will introduce changes in research management, research ethics and funding application governance that will hasten the integration of AUA, and ultimately the Republic of Armenia, in the EU and the global research community.

BOOST/Boosting Armenian Universities Internationalization Strategy & Marketing/ is a three-year national project under the priority of Governance Reform EACEA N 35/2012, 6th call and Structural measures action.The wider objective of the Project is to foster and promote further internationalization of Armenian Higher Education through development of national and institutional policy framework and tools.The specific objectives of the project are:• Development of national policy framework and tools for facilitating internationalization practices in Armenian HE.• Creation of a National Platform and online tools for mapping and benchmarking internationalization processes in Higher Education.• Build capacities of ICO staff of HEIs, MoES and social partners on strategic management, marketing and cultural challenges as well as implementation of credit mobility, ensuring holistic approach to internationalization management issues.• Create or enhance ICO resources and service-oriented centers at the Armenian HEIs, including development of strategic &marketing plans and tools.The objectives are realized through well planned activities at institutional, regional and national levels including workshops and trainings on strategic planning, management of international relations and structural improvements at partner institutions. The results of the national project are broadly disseminated among other higher educational institutions. The European partners from Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Estonia has brought in to the project the richness of their strong traditions in strategizing, marketing and enhancing international relations.

RESPONDRONE will develop and validate an integrated solution for first responders to easily operate a fleet of drones with multiple synchronized missions to enhance their situation assessment capacity and own protection. This System of Systems will simplify and accelerate situation assessment and sharing, decision making and operations management, while requiring a small crew to operate it. Moreover, it will deliver high-level information to any involved control centre through an intelligent web-based system that can be operated and accessed from a remote site as well as serving as on-demand airborne communications network to allow people on the ground to communicate with the command centre in case of cellular coverage collapse. With these situational-awareness enhancing tools, emergency response teams will be able to more rapidly, effectively and efficiently respond to an emergency or disaster and therefore save more lives. The fleet of drones will provide enhanced capabilities to support assessment missions, search and rescue operations, as well as forest fire fighting. The deployment will still be very simple. Each fleet or unit of drones will be able to be operated by a single pilot and few observers. To ensure seamless uptake and adaption by first responder organizations, RESPONDRONE will be fully integrated and embedded within the current processes and procedures of real emergency response agencies and teams, among others through advanced training programs. Therefore, RESPONDRONE will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of civil protection operations as it will consider the first responder total mission time, cost, and effectiveness (and not just considering the deployment time). RESPONDRONE will be demonstrated through participation in actual civil protection exercises on Corsica, involving several agencies simultaneously.

The MARUEEB project developed and implemented a new Master on “ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND ENERGY EFFICIENT BUILDINGS (EEB)” in Russian and Armenian Universities, according to features and learning outcomes delivering graduates environmental and “green buildings” technological issues’ skills.1. Curricular reform.Implemented an effective curricular development oriented towards the labour market requirements; supported the employability expectations of the graduates by development of a MARUEEB Educational Model (MEM) for new professionally oriented qualification in Environmental Protection and EEB shared among all the involved parties. The curricula reform has been promoted, officially recognized and actually implemented in the involved Universities in different training directions, with official Master Courses implementation by developing a versatile training programme, flexible and adaptive to labour market requirements; these Courses have been implemented over the project lifecycle; the 1st academic years have been completed in the framework of the 3rd project year. 2. Links university-enterprises.Developed a networking system among the PCs’ Universities and stakeholders, in order to remedy to the currently fragmented scientific background in Energy Efficiency and to the lack of distribution of knowledge, expertise, information & data.3. Dissemination of the improved educational elements and their exploitation beyond the project life-cycle.The MARUEEB Network has been linked and enlarged to the existing GREENMA Network, of which some MARUEEB partners are already members; the enlargement has happened by the stipulation of a MoU presented during the final conference in Yekaterinburg in October 2018, also in order to raise public awareness on “Environmental Protection and EEB” and to find sources and means of mid/long-term self-financing.The project in general terms also has spread and promoted the PCs’ awareness related to the EU policies referred to Environmental Engineering and EEB and to enhance the approach towards EU best practices, with specific reference to the «Environmental & Energy 20-20-20 targets».