"<< Background >>The aim of the project is to improve the quality of education regarding the fight against climate change in universities throughout Eastern, Central and Western Europe. It is well known that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are at the highest levels. So, we have an impact not only on human health but the real danger to the environment. Let us take into consideration CO2 emissions per capita in each partner country. In Spain, CO2 emissions per capita are equivalent to 5.4 tons per person, in Romania – 4.0, in Slovakia - 6.5 and in Ukraine - 4.8. Buildings consume an excessive amount of energy and produce too much waste. Their operation is also linked with consumption about 25 % of the world’s water and 40 % of its resources, while creating one-third waste and 40 % of global carbon emissions. Despite these statistics related to buildings unsustainability, buildings have huge untapped potential to become a key part of the solution to urgent sustainability challenges. Promoting energy efficient building is considered as the most successful strategy for CO2 emission reduction and energy saving during the life cycle of the building, while applying for suitable green building products plays an important role in facilitating energy efficient building promotion. New eco-friendly designs of buildings based on the construction of environmentally friendly materials can give improving human health, safety, comfort, and productivity in the current conditions of climate change. Environmentally friendly materials must become part of a sustainable world buildings design because their production and use could offer minimization of the negative environmental impacts. These impacts are representing by climate change, ozone layer depletion, acidification of soil and water, resources exhaustion or human toxicity in connection to indoor and outdoor air pollution. Therefore, it is very important to include sustainability ideas into products, operations, and research and development to apply best technologies, produce materials/products and increase waste construction materials by recycling/reusing them leaving a smaller negative environmental footprint. This situation requires clear steps to be taken to reduce the impact of climate change as a result of human activity. One of the first steps is to increase awareness, knowledge and opportunities to achieve “carbon neutrality”. Therefore, this project aims to create a Hi-EduCarbon educational course aimed at: •Determining the greenhouse gas emissions and removals on the level of product - building materials and building services.•Determining the greenhouse gas emissions and removals on the level of product - structures and building.•Determining the greenhouse gas emissions and removals on the level of organization, neighbourhoods and cities.<< Objectives >>Hi-EduCarbon course targeted for universities, state and public administrations and all private organizations is focused on the current state of ""Carbon neutrality"" in the world; the concepts of environmental audit at industrial enterprises; GHG emissions reducing in heating systems, ventilation and air conditioning; renewable sources of energy; optimal use of natural resources. One of the objectives of this course is to support all cooperated Universities in their internationalisation process. The educational program will help all participants to take decisions to solve complex and interdisciplinary questions by relying on gained knowledge. Through selected actions, they will progress in the program levels, achieving the outcome of a sustainable management and developing different skills and cognitive capacities. The aim of this education is not only to gain knowledge and experience in quantifying greenhouse gas emissions at the level of a product or organization, but especially a holistic view of the possibilities of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the level of neighbourhoods and cities. Thus, this education will also give the latest information, knowledge, and opportunities to mitigate climate change through green materials, energy, technologies and approaches on specific examples from the countries involved in this project.The project activities, intellectual outputs, project report will be shared on the project website freely. Academic studies to evaluate project results will be carried out and published in high impact journals. Project results and project’s intellectual outputs will be disseminated at the national and international conferences, seminars, workshops. These will make it appeal to a wide audience. Erasmus+ project results platform is an effective international platform and will be used in order to share the project results. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Linked-in will be used to reach a wider audience. Online streaming with the involved partners will be done on a regular basis in order to update the followers with the activities in the project.Results of the project are intended to help reduce the impacts of climate change and to be very useful for practice, in the design of buildings, entire urban areas, in the production of various products (construction, machine, textile, …). Therefore, the results will be presented to investors, developers, employees of state and public administration through seminars, workshops, and conferences.<< Implementation >>In the project, five transnational project meetings are planned to be held every six months, including the opening and closing meetings. Participants from each partner country will join in project meetings. The details about the meetings are:•Kick-off meeting: This will be the opening meeting of the project. Kick-off meeting will be organized in Slovakia or online (depending on the COVID situation). Project work plan, task and responsibilities, evaluation and reports periods will be discussed in this meeting. (January 2022)•1st project meeting: This meeting will be held in Spain or online (depending on the COVID situation) and will be the one of the periodical meetings in order to monitor and evaluate the project activities and discuss the course of the project. (September 2022)•2nd project meeting: This meeting will be held in Romania or online (depending on the COVID situation) and will be the one of the periodical meetings in order to monitor and evaluate the project activities and discuss the course of the project. (March 2023)•3th project meeting: This meeting will be held in Ukraine or online (depending on the COVID situation) and will be the one of the periodical meetings in order to monitor and evaluate the project activities and discuss the course of the project. (October 2023)•Final Meeting (Closing Meeting): This meeting will be the closing meeting of the project and held in lead partner’s country, Slovakia or online (depending on the COVID situation). (June 2024).During the project period, three main activities will be carried out to determine the greenhouse gas emissions and removals, with the first activity focusing on building materials and building services; second one on the structures and whole buildings and the third activity on the organizations, neighbourhoods and cities. Each training will be provided by experts involved in the project on a given topic from each participating university. The training will be provided by employees at universities, state and public administration, architects and other professionals who want to raise awareness in general in the field of creating a carbon-neutral environment and gain experience in determining greenhouse gas emissions for construction and other products and services. The training course (1 activity) will run for three days, 8 hours a day. Two days will focus on theoretical knowledge, current state of knowledge, legislative and normative regulations and requirements. The third day will be devoted to the practical calculation of greenhouse gas emissions for the selected product. The aim and result of the activity is to acquire knowledge and skills in determining greenhouse gas emissions.<< Results >>The project activities, intellectual outputs, project report will be shared on the project website freely. Academic studies to evaluate project results will be carried out and published in high impact journals. Project results and project’s intellectual outputs will be disseminated at the national and international conferences, seminars, workshops. These will make it appeal to a wide audience. Erasmus+ project results platform is an effective international platform and will be used in order to share the project results. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Linked-in will be used to reach a wider audience. Online streaming with the involved partners will be done on a regular basis in order to update the followers with the activities in the project.Results of the project are intended to help reduce the impacts of climate change and to be very useful for practice, in the design of buildings, entire urban areas, in the production of various products (construction, machine, textile, …). Therefore, the results will be presented to investors, developers, employees of state and public administration through seminars, workshops, and conferences."

Piezoelectricity in two-dimensional (2D) materials is increasingly important because of its potential in realizing thin yet efficient and flexible piezoelectric devices. In contrast to traditional three-dimensional (3D) piezo- and ferroelectrics that are prone to size effects, piezoelectricity in 2D materials may be controlled by flexoelectricity and interfaces thus providing significant piezoelectric effect in ultrathin films and crystals. Equally important, the majority of 2D layered piezoelectrics found so far possess in-plane piezoelectricity and require bending of flexible substrates to activate piezoelectric effect. This severely limits their integration with modern Si technology. This project aims at strengthening the piezoelectric activity in 2D materials via interface and stress engineering and bond control in order to reach the maximum efficiency and other relevant figures of merit. The materials list includes hafnium-zirconium oxide (HZO), transition metal thio/selenophosphates (TPS), graphene on oxide substrates, and polymer PDVF. A comprehensive investigation of piezoelectricity in these 2D materials and their relevant device performance is still at an initial stage and needs European support. Concerning piezoelectric energy harvesting, Piezo2D will build a technology to provide local energy generation (microgenerators) from the nm- to the micro-scale to power nano- and microdevices. Piezo2D will do so by enhancing and deploying the combined powers of equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics and atomistic models with device physics and engineering. Research results will underpin future developments of nanoscale energy devices for decades to come. We will also develop new characterization techniques and metrology-inspired protocols aiming at future standards and their use in the industry. The multidisciplinary approach of Piezo2D brings together leading teams in theoretical physics, materials science, chemistry and instrumentation working in synergy

CERIC-ERIC (CERIC) is a distributed research infrastructure for fundamental and applied research on novel materials and biomaterials. The RI has been in operation for 2 years and provides open access to a broad range of instruments and expertise across research communities, in order to support the research community world-wide in tackling the most challenging problems of materials research. The ACCELERATE project is proposed to support CERIC sustainability through activities of collaborative development of policies with other research infrastructures (RIs), in particular new and forming ERIC entities. ACCELERATE will assist sustainability, relevance and effectiveness of the RI through preparation of frameworks for services to private and public entities, outreach to new scientific and industrial networks and geographical areas and a methodology for RI social impact assessment. Together with the RI partners CERIC will also carry out several intense courses for development of future RI managerial, IL and TT staff. The project will be carried out while maintaining vigorous communication with research and industrial communities, policy makers, EC administration and other RI stakeholders.

The current social environment and high youth unemployment afflicting Europe, has led European policy to favour education seeking to promote the employability of young people. The crisis and the effect it has on the high unemployment rates, especially among the youth, has led some countries to give great importance to dual education at all educational levels and to speed up policies and reforms for the development of this system of education.The key feature of Dual (cooperative and work-integrated) Higher Education (DHE) is the unique combination of theory and practice. The university's curriculum combines higher education and on-the-job training at numerous partner companies, aiming to provide both academic skills and work-related expertise. In that regard, the academic content conveyed in classroom is complemented with workplace experience, so that real-life situations immediately test the effectiveness of classroom theory and vice versa.The project aim is to integrate Dual Higher Education (DHE) in the Partner countries in general, and to improve individual employability and development, increase suitability and continuity between the demands of the professional world and the initial training of university students, and achieve of greater economic efficiency and social integration, in particular.