BackgroundTalentjourney partners from Italy, Germany, Finland, Estonia and Slovenia aim to narrow and close skills’ gap in IOT in smart manufacturing, to innovate and improve the responsiveness of VET system to the needs of industry 4.0 and new era society. We also want to bring VET stakeholder collaboration to the excellence in content and ways of VET provision. All developed Talentjourney services focuses on user-oriented, user-friendly and eco-friendly solutions.Objectives To achieve the aims of the project the partners have defined the two following main objectives: establish the Talentjourney Platform of VET excellence in the field of IIOT that will provide user oriented, user- and eco-friendly solutions; and develop trans-national curricula and life-long trainings in the selected field.ImplementationThe two-year project was launched in November 2019. To get the necessary data on skills needs and gaps in the IIoT field and to get directions for the development of Talentjourney services we have performed interviews in companies and made global desktop research. Obtained information allowed us to start establishing fundamentals of a joint curriculum, lifelong training, trainings for professional development, ecosystem mapping.Results The developed deliverables are: IIOT skills data collection; joint curricula ideation; 8 training and 4 masterclass training for the professional development of trainers; starting points for the EQF 4 and EQF 5 modules of joint curriculum and life-long training in the IIOT field which connects holistically: AI, cybersecurity, data science, robotics and production process development; regional ecosystems mapping, personas and user journeys; project website, media channels for Talentjourney.

HiPower 5.0 is driven by the challenges and ambitions addressed in the Green Deal and in the Chips Act, to develop new power electronics solutions to ensure Green Deal targets and to foster a resilient and leading edge all-European Value Chain, for tomorrow’s mobility solutions. Therefore, HiPower 5.0 aims for developing highly integrated eDrive components for the automotive and maritime domain using leading edge wide bandgap semiconductors and power electronics integration technologies. This includes the development of new GaN wafer materials with superior performance, first time 850 V monolithically integrated bidirectional GaN switches, enabling new topologies and unprecedented efficiency levels of 99%, as well as 1200 V GaN switches fitting the needs of 800 V battery electric vehicles. When developing these solutions, a resource-efficient and reliable design is considered to minimize CO2 footprint and extent the lifetime of power electronics components. Firstly, multi-physics simulation with its ability to model the complex interactions between electrical, thermal, electro-magnetic, and mechanical phenomena will be used. By simulating these interactions, the system design can be optimized while performances can be predicted under various operating conditions, reducing the need for prototyping, and cutting both time and costs of development. Secondly, new ageing models and prognostics concepts will be developed to finally enable an according evaluation of the set targets of the single applications. Supported by innovations in power electronics control and cooling the lifetime and reliability will be further enhanced. To achieve these targets, the HiPower 5.0 consortium is composed along the whole value chain, starting from the GaN wafer and chips development, up to automotive and maritime Tier1/OEMs. This is accompanied by leading European universities and research organizations, guaranteeing a significant economic and scientific impact of the proposed work.