Cross-Cutting Activity 2
In today’s landscape, the powerhouse of scientific progress lies within research institutes and R&D companies. These entities drive innovation in their own manner—pioneering studies and developing groundbreaking products and technologies, respectively. Imagine how far innovation could advance by harmonizing research trajectories and perspectives with market strategies aimed at shaping sustainable solutions. This is the aim of iNEST’s Cross-Cutting Activity 2 (CC2): dismantling the entrenched barriers that divide the worlds of research and production.
According to iNEST, the key to realize this ambitious vision lies in creating a truly shared working environment—one that transcends mere intellectual exchange to encompass physical collaboration spaces. This is the vision behind the concept of a Lab Village, a dynamic hub of joint laboratories where people coming from both academia and industry converge to co-create cutting-edge products, services, and artifacts. By identifying areas of common interest, universities and companies manage to define scientific and technological roadmaps that bring into play their respective strengths: the research expertise of academia and the strategic acuity of industry pioneers.
Within Spoke 9, the mission of CC2 is to elevate the interaction and synergy between industry and research in the area of Trieste. By creating an environment where brilliant minds from the academic world connect with pro-active company leaders, innovative research ideas will turn into solutions bringing concrete benefits to citizens. This will stimulate a culture of shared knowledge, reciprocal growth, and long-lasting technological progress. At the same time, it will promote a vision of Trieste as a cornerstone for sustainable and effective technology transfer.
Living labs: empowering innovation and transforming communities
To surmount the challenge of disseminating research findings to the broader population, innovative ecosystems have emerged: living labs.
Picture a societal issue with implications on many levels, such as urban mobility, healthcare data management, or tourism logistics. A living lab is a vibrant community where scientists collaborate hand-in-hand with a diverse portion of the population. The goal of such a dynamic nexus is to envision, design, and execute experiments aimed at addressing these pressing concerns. It is a community-driven powerhouse for the deployment of transformative technologies, products, and services with the potential to reshape our world.
Trieste’s dual-level Lab Village
Lab Villages are already found across the Triveneto territory, encompassing a myriad of fields comprised within the iNEST mission. In particular, the city of Trieste stands as an unparalleled location for innovation and technology transfer. Boasting Europe’s highest concentration of researchers, Trieste hosts a dynamic R&D ecosystem, comprising two prestigious universities, an array of esteemed public research institutions, a technological park, and the headquarters of prominent Italian corporations. In this landscape, Trieste offers an ideal canvas for the cultivation of robust Lab Villages, capable of sparking transformative breakthroughs.
To unleash the full potential of Trieste as a leading innovation hub, CC2 is pioneering the creation of a dual-level Lab Village. It is a unique opportunity to establish a visionary and sustainable nexus aligned with the long-term objectives of the iNEST Consortium.
T-Cube: Innovating with Science
At the core of the project lies the development of T-Cube (Trieste Tech Transfer), an advanced virtual platform that will utilize the latest generative artifical intelligence systems. This platform will connect the world of research—starting from the iNEST research groups working on AI, applied mathematics, data science (Spoke 9), and blue innovation (Spoke 8)—with the industrial and services system. This distributed Lab Village will foster an effective exchange of ideas, data, knowledge, and solutions to address local innovation needs. Its potential will be fully unleashed thanks to the quality of data and expertise coming from researchers and to the contribution of industry experts, who will find its best application and will provide valuable feedback.
The physical Lab Village
Besides the virtual platform, a physical Lab Village will also be activated, to showcase the platform’s processes and the synergies between researchers and innovators. This facility will highlight the key role of Trieste within the landscape of technology transfer and will be located in Porto Vecchio, to symbolize the city’s international relaunch. Here, workshops, seminars, and many other events will be organized to unite researchers and innovation experts, fostering partnerships and joint projects through the use of the platform. The physical Lab Village will also hold specific educational programs, to equip today’s users with all the necessary skills to effectively navigate in this environment of shared innovation and to prepare tomorrow’s users—i.e. university and doctoral students from SISSA and the University of Trieste.
Details
Cross-Cutting Activity 2 starts in month 1 and ends in month 40.
Its leader is the University of Udine (UNIUD).
