<< Objectives >>The Academy4Business project brings together 4 academic and 4 business organisations from Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. In international cooperation they develop and pilot a cross-disciplinary, cross-border, and cross-sector innovative blended course on developing and supporting EdTech entrepreneur mindset. This capacity-building project aims at reducing the cap between the academic and business sectors by reciprocal knowledge transfer and supporting future entrepreneurs.<< Implementation >>The Academy4Business will implement online and hands-on learning opportunities for students and professors who learn together with business mentors. The opportunities are first co-designed by using the design thinking approach, then piloted and followed by feedback, improved and transferred to the digital deliverables for a 6-credit A4B blended course curriculum. To achieve it, 4 physical co-design sessions, 9 online webinars, 3 onsite 3-day workshops, 9 mentoring sessions will be conducted.<< Results >>The main result is a 6-credit blended course for academy to boost the entrepreneurial and scientific mind-set for future entrepreneurs and knowledge workers in EdTech. It consists of several innovative high-level digital deliverables that are disseminated to the wider audience via open educational digital resources and multiplier events. The main impact of the project is to increase the quality and relevance of partnering-universities’ teaching activities in entrepreneurship field.

The recent COVID-19 era demonstrated the need for seamless education, accessible under most challenging circumstances. It was revealed that while the technologies for facing these challenges exist, more work is needed to adapt these in modern education – a task that requires significant collaborative effort from academia and the rapidly developing Educational Technology Sector (EdTech) in order to involve best practices and validate novel products and services for the real world classroom use. For various reasons, this collaboration has been meagre so far. The goal of the EdTech Talents project is to strengthen academia/non-academia cooperation and reinforce the EdTech innovation ecosystems of Estonia, Hungary and Serbia by conducting a long-term knowledge transfer process for (a) the researchers and their support staff of these widening countries to learn from the EdTech spin-offs and consulting companies of Austria, Germany and Spain; and (b) the researchers of these advanced countries to share their relevant intellectual capital with the EdTech start-ups of these widening countries. During this process, knowledge transfer is supported via dedicated mentoring and training that aim at establishing continuous and more impactful flow of innovation, ideas, knowledge, know-how and relevant services among all involved, corresponding with the scope of ERA Policy Agenda and ERA Talents call for cross-sectoral talent circulation and academia-business collaboration, with the focus on widening countries.

ZEBAI is an ambitious integrative project in which a broad range of interdisciplinary teams collaborate to develop a new methodology that aims to change the way that Zero-emission buildings are designed, by integrating all interdependent analysis and partial alternative decision-making processes under a holistic approach that allows the evaluation of a design simultaneously taking into account: energy performance, environmental impact, indoor environmental quality, and cost-effectiveness. For this purpose, we will require to develop a database of well-characterised materials and make an estimation of discrepancies between simulated and actual building performance. The methodology that will be used is artificial intelligence techniques to optimise the selection of materials and systems in different aspects of the building design. The AI-assisted methodology aims to make the design process more efficient and user-friendly while incorporating all environmental quality and cost-effectiveness objectives. This approach will enable the optimisation of new architectural designs towards scalable Zero Energy Building (ZEB) design in different climates, usages, and building patterns, with the ultimate goal of achieving a zero-emission building stock by 2050. During the project, we will test ZEBAI methodology with four representative demonstrators (located in Ukraine, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands). ZEBAI relies on previously funded European research projects and aligns with several national initiatives in which the partners collaborate.

More than 10 million Europeans show signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition intermediate between normal brain ageing and dementia. The evolution of MCI differs from person to person; some remain stable or return to normal, but 50% progress to dementia within five years. Current practice lacks the necessary screening tools to identify those 50% at risk. The patient’s journey typically takes many years of inefficient clinical follow-ups before a conclusive diagnosis is finally reached. AI-Mind will radically shorten this journey to 1 week through a digital solution that is able to provide a fast and accurate (>95%) prediction for the individual dementia risk. Our AI-Mind platform service, can be easily integrated into existing clinical practices and contains 2 new artificial-intelligence-based tools. The AI-Mind Connector identifies dysfunctional brain networks. The AI-Mind Predictor assesses demen-tia risk using data from the Connector, advanced cognitive tests, genetic biomarkers and important textual variables. Our aim is to set up a European clinical network that will upload patient data to the AI-Mind European cloud platform. The consortium comprises excellent researchers in neuroscience and computer science, from 5 clinical cen-tres, who closely collaborate with 3 SMEs contributing unique technologies, an established data govern-ance body, and Alzheimer Europe. Together, they plan to deliver a medical device of class 2b that can reach TRL7 by the end of the project. AI-Mind represents a major step forward in the risk assessment of dementia. Clinicians will promptly advise therapies to delay the onset of disease, and patients will enjoy independent lives for longer. By offering a globally accessible, cheap and precise tool for dementia pre-diction, AI-Mind will improve the health care system and boost innovation by shifting the R&D of phar-maceutical organisations and other companies to preventive diagnostic methods and therapies for dementia.