With the advent of social networks and Mobile networks, new online communities are being created around sustainable topics (environmental, social, community development). The phenomena, known as digital social innovation, generates a positive ecosystem where business and social development enabled with new behaviours boosted by social, complementary or community currencies deployed as virtual currencies have a great potential for competitiveness, and entrepreneurship, but also for fostering social responsibility in Europe. VirCoin2SME projects aims at studying how the business development could be fully deployed around the ecosystem of social networks and virtual currencies, which facilities new exchanges for wealthier communities. Research objectives to be developed in VirCoin2SME project are: 1.To compare different models of social networks influence on business processes 2.To analyze the mechanisms behind the adoption of social, complementary or community virtual currencies. 3.To research on the potential impact of digital innovation and alternative currencies development in social, environmental and economic sustainability. 4.To develop two sector-oriented proposals/guidelines (healthcare and tourism) for developing sustainable business models based on the use of complementary and/or virtual currencies The previous research objectives will be achieved by implementing a collaborative working scheme where research entities will design the methodology and elaborate final guidelines to develop, according to the actual business scenarios defined and analyzed by the private companies involved in VirCoin2SME, in the two respective sectors that will act as use cases for study and proposals development: healthcare and tourism. Dissemination and communication activities will be designed and developed in parallel to ensure the wider impact of the knowledge generated and to foster new business generation around sustainable models not only in Europe,but internationally.

The ERC-funded project BIDECASEOX ERC-239910 has produced a series of chiral catalysts with broad applicability in various commercial fields associated with synthetic organic chemistry. These catalysts are based in earth abundant metals and activate hydrogen peroxide to perform asymmetric introduction of oxygen atoms into readily available and cheap non chiral organic molecules, producing highly valuable chiral products, leaving water as the only byproduct. By virtue of these reactions, valuable chiral products that nowadays are only accessible by expensive enzymatic methods, or in some cases by toxic, expensive and large waste-producing traditional stoichiometric oxidants, become available in a sustainable manner. Pharmaceutical and agricultural industry, polymer chemistry and fine chemistry are envisioned as potential targets for the interest of the catalysts. With the aim of accelerating their access to the market, the present Proof of Concept (PoC) project, named CHIROXCAT, will target to study the feasibility of bringing these catalysts into a pre-commercial stage. This will be achieved by scaling-up current mg-scale synthetic methods, in order to establish economically optimized multigram scale procedures, and by validating their use in the production of representative chiral molecules of potential interest to the fine chemical industry. This PoC activity will also include an analysis of intellectual property (IP) protection needs within the field of application, as well as setting up the basis for any patent filling procedure required to provide an adequate protection of the catalysts and their uses. Moreover, a market study will be conducted to identify specific potential uses of these compounds, and a review of potential commercialisation partners will be carried out. The expected outcomes of the PoC project will be the commercial availability of a portfolio of chiral catalysts based in earth abundant metals with application in chemical

We live in the “plastic age”. Plastics are key for societal innovation and used on a daily basis. However, due to their ubiquity, persistence, inadequate management & improper waste disposal, they tend to accumulate in the environment. Besides, during their life cycle, they degrade into tiny polluting bits called microplastics (MP<5mm), considered a major environmental threat. Biodegradable plastics (BioMP) have become an alternative since they can be mineralized under certain temperature and moisture conditions. Fluvial sediments and their inherent microbial communities could potentially decompose BioMP due to their role as a nutrient recycling and its high enzymatic activity. However, how the degradation of BioMP will affect nutrient re-cycles in aquatic ecosystems, an essential ecological service, is still unknown. In addition, global change, especially, rising temperature, and hydrologic extreme events, mobilize plastics in freshwater systems and further degrading them into MPs. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop tools to assess, predict and mitigate their effects on freshwater ecosystems. SEDIPLASTIC seeks to explore and provide new knowledge on MP (non- and biodegradable) effects on freshwater sediments under global change conditions. Sediment columns with different grain size, with/without microbial communities, and microparticles (inert, MP, BioMP) will be used. Hydrological parameters, nutrients, dissolved organic carbon, bacterial biomass, viability, and functionality, and MP mobility and degradation will be analysed. Moreover, to better understand the key role of MP in freshwater sediments and how can affect ecosystems services, a predictive model will be developed using project experimental data. Project outcomes will impact beyond academia providing novel tools for industry, government, and thus societal wellbeing. It will contribute to major EU research priorities and to global efforts such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (6, 12, & 14).

An innovative methodology has been developed in the field of copper-catalyzed cross coupling catalysis, with the goal of developing more efficient and sustainable synthetic protocols used by Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Successful research developed within the ERC-2011-StG-277801 project has led to discover new methodologies for sustainable catalytic transformations using copper catalysts to form C-C or C-heteroatom bonds, finding out the feasibility of uncommon copper(III) species as key intermediates. This new methodology features three main advantages: a) Precise design of the auxiliary ligands used in these transformations is a pathway of a more sustainable reactivity; b) competitive alternative to the price and toxicity disadvantages of Pd-based catalysts; and c) it can impart distinct selectivity that will broaden the scope of synthetic tools. The goal of the present CatalApp project is to study the feasibility of bringing this technology into a pre-commercial stage, with the aim of accelerating the access to the market of this new methodology. The pre-commercial stage will be orientated into: 1) A technical perspective that will be achieved by scaling-up current gram-scale methodologies to kilogram scale procedures. 2) An Economic and legal perspective, which include an analysis of Intellectual Property (IP) protection needs, evaluation of patent filling procedures required to provide an adequate protection of the different developed methodologies, a market study to identify specific potential uses of these synthetic tools, and a review of potential commercialisation partners. The expected outcomes of the PoC project will be the commercial availability of a portfolio of synthetic methodologies based on Copper, designed for specific applications. The strive of the CatalApp PoC project is making available these new methodologies in response to the demand of the industry and investors in order to ensure its results will be exploited successfully.