Horizon Europe

HVL is currently participating in these ongoing Horizon Europe projects.

HVL is aiming at increasing its participation in Horizon Europe and we are always looking for new opportunities for cooperation.

News updates

August 2023: Towards FAIR and open data ecosystems in the energy research community (The EU funded Horizon 2020 project EERAdata)

Thanks to our strong links within the local and regional ecosystems in Western Norway and our capacity to engage with various stakeholders from the public and private sectors as well as the civil society, we want to contribute to new knowledge, innovative solutions and policy development to address the current and future societal challenges from a sustainable perspective. We welcome candidates for post doctoral fellowships under MSCA-Actions. For more information on our offer and support please follow the link below:

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Postdoctoral Fellowships at HVL

Education and society

The SENSE. project seeks to develop the ‘New European Roadmap to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths) Education’, addressing the learning continuum from school to work life. The consortium, coordinated by HVL, includes 17 partner organisations across 14 different European countries that will establish 13 ‘STEAM Labs’ across Europe. The project was launched in September 2022, and it is due to run until 2025.

Europe needs more young people to take up careers in science-related sectors. According to the European Skills Agenda only “one in five young people graduates from STEM in tertiary education” and only half as many women as man. Europe also needs a science-literate society and a skilled workforce to successfully tackle global environmental challenges, to make informed use of digital technologies and to counteract disinformation and fake news campaigns.

SENSE. seeks to increase the public’s interest in science by merging the arts and aesthetics into STEM education, reshaping how STEM subjects are taught in Europe. Funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s research and innovation programme, the consortium of 17 members represents 14 European countries. Members consist of formal and informal education institutions, research, businesses, policymakers and NGOs; member specialisms include sustainability, gender sensitivity, digitisation, health, work readiness, arts and design as well as life-long learning.

The project will develop an accessible educational roadmap promoting socially conscious and scientifically literate citizens and professionals. It addresses outdated perceptions of current science education as well as gender stereotypes by integrating the arts, social inclusion and spatial design as its core components. SENSE. will establish 13 ‘STEAM Labs’ across Europe to develop and evaluate the ‘SENSE. approach’ to STEAM subjects alongside students, educators, teachers, businesses and other stakeholders.

The ‘New European Roadmap to STEAM Education’ will take the shape of a STEAM learning companion to support tomorrow’s educators and learners – be it in the classroom, in a museum or on a drilling rig. A digital hub will be established, where practitioners from all ages and backgrounds across Europe will be able to access tried and tested educational practices to increase engagement within these subjects.

Coordinator: Lydia Schulze Heuling

More info: www.sense-steam.eu

Given technological developments in other domains and lessons from the pandemic, there is a strong push to invest in technology-augmented education. However, much remains unknown; for example, what technological abilities are useful in education, how they can be deployed, what training needs arise, and what shape future policies governing this should take. EMPOWER contributes to resolving these questions by developing novel technological support for the education of children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs).

This use case is, in many ways challenging, and thus ideally suited to 1) make a positive impact on the educational needs of these children, and 2) highlight the potential and limitations of technology-augmented education in a way that can inform future developments generally. NDDs affect approximately 15% of children aged 3 to 17 years. These children can experience difficulties with language and speech, motor skills, behaviour, memory, learning, or other neurological functions and benefit from education tailored to their needs.

The core output of EMPOWER is an educational platform, co-created by all involved stakeholders, that facilitates the improvement of these key skills in children with NDDs. The platform will be tested and evaluated in school settings with all stakeholders involved according to the strict standards of a randomized clinical trial. In addition to technological advances, the lessons learned from the development and deployment of this platform will provide valuable insights into the needs and possibilities for training teachers in the use of new technologies.

Project leader: Ilona Heldal

For more info: https://project-empower.eu/

DocTalent4EU aims to enhance PhD employability through a strong, visible and innovative recognition-system of the most in-demand transferable skills (relying on the ESCO framework) that early-career researchers (ECRs) acquire or will acquire through their doctoral training and research activities.

The consortium will adopt a multi-actor approach involving non-academic stakeholders (e.g. public authorities, industries or business) to improve transferable skills training and to develop local talent management centres. The project will also develop a new prototype based on machine learning to support ESCO in continuously updating and predicting the most in-demand skills on the labour market concerning the 8 EQF level, according to the expected skills from job offer collections.

Project leader: Bjarte Håvik

More info: https://projects.uni-foundation.eu/DocTalent4EU/

Developing strategies for inclusive growth and devising actions to promote immigrant integration through non-discrimination are among Europe’s current priorities. This project will evaluate if the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which is used to standardize host country language requirements for different professions throughout Europe, can serve as an effective tool to reduce hiring discrimination against immigrants. Employers have been shown to discriminate against immigrant applicants based on language-related bias, which can be reduced when language requirements are specified in CEFR terms. Based on a novel design that combines real-world variation in the inclusion of CEFR requirements in job ads with a factorial survey experiment and in-depth interviews among employers, the project will address three objectives: 1) Examining if the inclusion of CEFR requirements reduces differential treatment of immigrant applicants on aggregate; 2) Identifying labour market areas and ethnic groups that benefit most from the introduction of CEFR requirements; 3) Assessing the current implementation of CEFR requirements in relation to uninformed or inadequate use.

Contact: Miriam Schmaus

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101065566

The project aims at developing international digital offers for start-ups, students, and (non-)academic staff in the competence fields of innovation and entrepreneurship. INTREPID-HEI is supported by EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Project leader

Øyvind Midtbø Berge

Vice-Dean for Innovation and Regional Development

More info: https://intrepid-hei.eu/

The PIONEERED project will specify research-informed policy standards and identify innovative policies and practices to reduce inequalities in accessing education. The project will identify emerging and existing sources of educational inequalities from early childhood to tertiary education, design pioneering policies and practices of reaction, incorporate the findings, and determine the most adaptable instruments and innovative policies to apply across Europe.

PIONEERED will analyse national policies addressing inequalities, analyse new and existing relevant data, and conduct research in schools and informal education centres.

Project leader:

Solvejg Jobst

Head of PhD programme

More info: https://www.pioneered-project.eu/

Safety, transport and mobility

The OCEAN project is focused on enhancing operator awareness in navigation, to reduce the frequency of severe accidents like collision and grounding, to mitigate ship-strike risks to marine mammals, and to mitigate the risk presented by floating obstacles to ships. The project will contribute to an improved understanding of accident root causes, and will strive to reduce the resulting human, environmental and economic losses through socio-technical innovations supporting ship navigators.

Around 3.000 maritime incidents occur every year in the European maritime fleet. 28% of these accidents are categorised as severe or very severe accidents, resulting in the loss of life onboard, pollution, fire, collisions or grounding. Navigational accidents are dominant in these statistics according to the European Maritime Safety Agency, be it for cargo, passenger or service ships.

The OCEAN project ambition is to contribute to the mitigation of navigational accidents by supporting the navigators to do an even better job than they do presently. The OCEAN consortium will address the most pertinent factors that may contribute to events becoming accidents: training, technical, human or organisational factors, operational constraints, processes and procedures, commercial pressures, and will recommend improvements and amendments to regulations, standards and bridge equipment design approaches.

OCEAN seeks to enhance navigational awareness “on the spot” and to improve the performance of evasive manoeuvring to avoid collision with near-field threats. The project will deliver and demonstrate several human centred innovations. For example, the 4D Situation Awareness Display which will be developed in the OCEAN project will improve the visualisation of navigational hazards, integrating current bridge information systems with marine mammal and lost floating containers detection and tracking capacity specifically developed by the project.

Going further, the project will design and implement a European navigational hazard data infrastructure to feed multi-source observations and hazard predictions relating to floating containers and large aggregations of marine mammals into the existing distributed maritime warning infrastructure. OCEAN seeks to transfer this data ecosystem to relevant European organisations for deployment and maintenance.

The consortium of 13 members represents 7 European countries, Norway, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland and UK, all located on major European coastal regions. Members include a coastal administration, a ship operator, maritime safety and transport researchers, marine mammal ecology and conservation experts, companies specialised in maritime information systems and sensors, a professional organisation, a risk and safety management organisation, as well as data infrastructure, data fusion and satellite imaging specialists. UK participants are supported by UK Research and Innovation Grant Number 10038659 (Lloyd’s Register) and Grant Number 10052942 (The Nautical Institute).

The project launched in October 2022 and is scheduled to run for three years.

Coordinator: Erik Styhr Petersen

More info: www.ocean-navigation-awareness.eu

The overall goal of MobileWorlds is to explore pathways to better integrate socio-cultural diversity into today's institutions, so they may better deal with contemporary challenges of sustainable mobility and societal inequalities. Such pathways are sought by engaging explicitly with third culture experiences to identify concrete diverse imaginaries and allowing these to feed into equally diverse solutions that can realistically be implemented. Third cultures are unique cultures that emerge from contact with different home and contextual cultures during the formative years of an individual. These third cultures are increasingly common in a globalising world, and may have important repercussions for imaginaries for sustainable and just mobility futures. As such, they provide promising sources for pathways that integrate socio-cultural diversity into today's institutions. Bergen, Norway and Porto, Portugal are known for cultural diversity and advancement in sustainable mobility. Combined, they provide both a Northern and a Southern European perspective and a particularly interesting context within which to research this subject.

Contact: Kim Carlotta Von Schönfeld

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101062953

Project website: https://mobileworlds.online

Recent disaster events, like the 2021 flood in Germany showed clearly, that even the best alert systems and top first responder organisations cannot prevent fatalities without having prepared the citizens how to act and react during disaster situations and crises. B-PREPARED offers a cost-effective solution for building a culture of disaster preparedness with a multi-actor approach in realistic historical scenarios.

B-PREPARED creates a collaborative co-creation platform to build and share knowledge about disasters and means to survive them. This invaluable resource serves as the foundation for three demonstrator applications, delivering the content for citizens: a cooperative multiplayer VR serious game, simulating real disaster scenarios for the safest near-real experience; an interactive gamified mobile app with age-appropriate content and enhanced accessibility to people with specific functional needs for the widest possible reach; and an Learning Management System to effectively and comparably measure preparedness levels achieved by VR and/or mobile users on a unified scale.

Players can take different roles to solve puzzle tasks in an immersive experience. Teamplay, collaboration and communication are keys to survival, strengthening the culture of mutual assistance and cooperation in danger. Player behaviour and gameplay logged in a privacy-preserving way helps collect data on in-game behaviour which serves assessment of preparedness.

A large-scale virtual reality hackathon series will be organised to showcase its potential. The game will be available in a non-profit freemium model where in-game purchases are replaced by in-game donations for relief organizations, with a small percentage kept for maintenance and further development.

B-PREPARED brings together a pan-European multi-disciplinary team of experts from 11 different countries and is coordinated by the Institute for Computer Science and Control, HUN-REN SZTAKI.

Project leader at HVL:

Ilona Heldal

Professor

Department of Computer science, Electrical engineering and Mathematical sciences

More info: http://b-prepared-project.com/

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JUST STREETS aims to transform cities’ car-centered mobility narratives that take for granted that streets are for motorized traffic only, promoting walking, cycling and other active modes of mobility. JUST STREETS will be re-shaping street infrastructure and changing individual mobility behavior in 12 cities, while proactively sharing the generated “how-to-do-it” knowledge with hundreds of cities for rapid replication across Europe. In close collaboration with citizens, policy makers, experts, and interest groups the project will not only develop a new vision of spatial justice where streets become public space for all, but equally important find ways to rapidly implement changes. A strong focus is on displaying how necessary transformations in the face of climate change can (and must) successfully improve social justice, accessibility, inclusivity, and security along the way. Putting marginalized social groups, the most vulnerable mobility users, as well as those citizens at the core of JUST STREETS that have been previously underrepresented in mobility infrastructure decision-making will allow the project to create highly valuable knowhow, critical in creating better, more just, and sustainable cities for all citizens.

The project falls under the EU mission on Climate Neutral and Smart Cities.

Project start 1. January 2024 and end 30. June 2027.

Project lead HVL: Wendy Tan

Website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101104240

Sustainability, energy and materials

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is widely used in plastics and textiles leading to over 20 Mt/y of complex waste worldwide for which no closed-loop recycling is viable today. Most complex waste is landfilled or incinerated. There is an urgent need to develop a circular solution to convert complex PET wastes from plastics and textiles back into high-added value products.

WHITECYCLE aims to demonstrate two new processes combining strong scientific and industrial know-how: (i) innovative identification, sorting and separation technologies that will dramatically increase the PET content of complex waste streams to 80%, and (ii) a disruptive enzymatic recycling process that is expected to yield pure PET monomers sustainably even for impure waste streams. Process design kits, LCA and production cost estimates will be provided to PET manufacturers and waste management companies for rapid deployment and assure social acceptance.

First projections show that WHITECYCLE’s recycled PET will be competitive with virgin PET. The project will conduct a full circle loop from real complex waste feedstock to representative product of the 3 use-cases at TRL 5. Then, a strong upscale study will allow the process steps to reach TRL 6 to 8. By 2030, WHITECYCLE will enable the annual recycling of more than 2 Mt of PET, which corresponds to the amount of additional recycled PET needed to meet the EU’s 2030 targets. This will reduce emissions by around 2.06 Mt CO2eq and avoid the landfilling of more than 1.8 Mt of PET.

Project leader: Valeria Jana Schwanitz

For more info: https://www.whitecycle-project.eu/

HVL is a Third Party in the StoRIES project.

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101036910

As part of its Green Deal, the EU aims to decarbonize energy production by 55% compared to 1990 levels and must turn to renewable energy sources. While the northern European countries have some access to these sources, they do not have consistent amounts of sunlight for photothermal energy (PE) generation. Novel approaches are under development to allow these regions to benefit from solar resources. Solar radiation-induced boiling in nanofluids can be used for PE steam generation as it facilitates more efficient solar collector technology. However, knowledge of the mechanisms behind this boiling is severely lacking because the methods to measure these systems are inaccurate at scale and cannot be used for practical, opaque nanofluids, limiting the focus to macroscopic properties. Understanding these mechanisms is the key to advancing PE technologies. Therefore, this project endeavours to develop and use new methods to qualify and quantify the photothermal boiling process in nanofluids at the microscale.

More info: Read more on this web page.

Contact

Adam Mcelligott

Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Mechanical engineering and Maritime studies

Sustainable development of aquaculture is one of the main objectives of the common fisheries policy. Despite rather high profitability, the industry has been confronted with several (and mounting) environmental and ethical issues. It is therefore important to strengthen the legitimacy of the aquaculture industry, reduce its negative environmental impact and increase its positive societal impact.

Co-funded under the Horizon Europe Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, AQUABALANCE will explore strategies and best practices for balancing economic, environmental, and social sustainability and provide the aquaculture industry and stakeholders with new knowledge and evidence-based recommendations boosting the sustainability and viability of the sector. The project follows a pan-European perspective by focusing on different geographical locations and sea-basins (North Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean), where existing and promising solutions for more sustainable aquaculture industry will be mapped. Based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, it will create new knowledge about how the European aquaculture industry can develop onwards in ways that are not environmentally harmful, and contribute to value creation locally, nationally, and internationally. By combining several theoretical perspectives (economic geography, socio-technical transition studies, and literature on sustainable business models), the project will provide valuable research-based insight and action points on an efficient and smart industry policy in order to successfully cope with the societal challenges of promoting economically robust, environmentally friendly, and socially inclusive industrial activities. AQUABALANCE will provide pan-European and regional industry and policy advice and a policy roadmap that has a transnational perspective and also can be adapted to the regional specificities. These recommendations will serve as a background for a more sustainable growth of the aquaculture industry, contributing to achieving the goals of the EU Farm to Fork strategy. The project consortium consists of Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and The Seafood Innovation Cluster (Norway), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), University of Verona (Italy) and University of Limerick (Ireland) and is coordinated by Prof. Natalia Mæhle, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

Kicking off in April 2024 for a duration of 3 years, the project will begin with identifying barriers and drivers for the ongoing transition in the aquaculture sector. The consortium will carry out 12 qualitative case studies in different European hubs and a series of stakeholder workshops in order to investigate dilemmas associated with rebalancing the economic, environmental, and social dimensions and explore the role of policy. AQUABALANCE will also develop an assessment method for economic viability and environmental effects of new technological solutions. Moreover, the consortium will provide new knowledge on consumer preferences through a wide market survey and deliver sustainability communication toolkits for practitioners. To ensure wider impact beyond academia, policy recommendations will be co-created with stakeholders through a policy experimentation lab.

Project Coordinator:

Natalia Mæhle

Professor

HVL Business School

Health

HVL is Associated Partner in the MSCA Doctoral Network project LABDA.

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101072993

The European Commission published in 2021 Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, emphasizing patient-centered cancer care and promoting actions to enable personalised cancer treatment, improve the quality of life of cancer patients and their caregivers, and reduce inequalities in accessing high-quality cancer care across Europe. To meet these ambitious goals, scientific and technological breakthroughs in radiation therapy are needed, in particular for the treatment of radioresistant, hypoxic (oxygen-deprived) tumors associated with low survival rates, involving sophisticated and more accurate radiation dose delivery techniques and enabling personalised dose escalation while ensuring patient safety.

Proton therapy has the potential to offer the most conformal radiation dose to patients, and the number of proton therapy centers around the globe follows a significantly upwards and persisting trend. Adaptive proton therapy, by monitoring and adapting to changes in patient anatomy between treatment fractions, is required to enable safe delivery of proton therapy and to spare healthy tissues. However, truly personalised, dose escalated treatments with proton therapy are not yet possible due to the lack of real-time dose verification technology to truly empower patient-centered cancer treatment, important to improve curation and quality-of-life.

The NOVO (Next generation imaging for real-time dose verification enabling adaptive proton therapy) project aims at making real-time dose verification an integral component of proton therapy -based cancer care in the long-term, allowing precise control over radiation doses delivered to the tumor, as well as preventing unintended exposure of healthy surrounding tissues. We will develop the first proof-of-concept of a groundbreaking real-time dose verification technology adaptable to any proton therapy treatment. The proof-of-concept will be tested under pre-clinical conditions, bringing the envisaged technology concept to Technology Readiness Level 4.

Our high risk/ high gain approach builds on the synergy between: cutting-edge and low-cost organic scintillator technology to detect secondary radiation during treatment for non-invasive measurements; novel and fast image reconstruction algorithms, AI-accelerated models and AI-enhanced image reconstruction to allow simultaneous detection and imaging of multiple radiation species and tissue compositional analysis; tumor-tracking and imaging of tissue radio-sensitivity based on oxygen levels; and intelligent automation of decision-making schemes for real-time dose-guided adaptive therapy. We will also demonstrate technical robustness and trustworthiness of the AI methods used to ensure patient safety and address its effective integration within adaptive therapy clinical workflows.

The NOVO consortium covers the entire value chain of real-time dose verification development (technology providers, theory and modelling, technology integration and testing, and end-users) and will foster transdisciplinary collaborations between nuclear, medical, and high-energy physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, oncologists, biologists, as well as European proton therapy centers.

Coordinated by Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Norway), the NOVO consortium consists of Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Target Systemelektronik and Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems (Germany), Bogazici University (Türkiye), University of Manchester (The United Kingdom) and University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital- Helse Bergen (Norway). The project is led by Ilker Meric.

Starting in March 2024 for a duration of four years, NOVO will receive European Union’s funding of almost 3.8 million € from the European Innovation Council as part of the EIC Pathfinder Open programme, under Horizon Europe. EIC Pathfinder supports the exploration of bold ideas for radically new technologies and finances high-risk / high gain and interdisciplinary cutting-edge science collaborations for technological breakthroughs.

Contact: novoeic@hvl.no

The sub-Saharan region in Africa still experiences the highest under-five mortality rate in the world despite improvements since the 1990s. The impact of poor nutrition and poverty-related diseases, including malaria and diarrhea is exacerbated by poor healthcare systems and inequity in access to care. Policy makers and practitioners need evidence-informed guidance on effective clinical care, and they need guidance on how to implement this care efficiently within their health systems.

The GELA project will address these gaps with evidence-informed guideline recommendations for newborn and young child health in three countries – Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa. GELA will increase the capacity of decision makers and researchers to use global research to develop locally relevant guidelines for newborn and child health. GELA focuses on priority topics for each of the participating countries, selected with stakeholders in each country to identify local priorities and capacity needs within newborn and child health. To inform this process, GELA conducted a landscape analysis of existing clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for newborn and child health in these countries.

GELA is coordinated by the South African Medical Research Council and the partners include the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Western Norway University of Applied Science, Stellenbosch University (South Africa), University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (Nigeria), Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (Malawi), Cochrane and the MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation (Norway). The consortium is teaming up with national ministries in Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) and WHO Afro and the civil society group, Peoples Health Movement.

GELA is supported by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) under the EDCTP2 programme (grant number RIA2020S -3303-GELA). EDCTP is a public-public partnership between countries in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Project leader: https://www.hvl.no/en/employee/?user=Claire.Glenton

More info: Global Evidence, Local Adaptation (GELA) | Cochrane Africa

RiskGone - Risk Governance of Nanotechnology

More info: https://riskgone.eu/

Emil Cimpan

Associate Professor

Department of Computer science, Electrical engineering and Mathematical sciences

RRI2SCALE - Responsible Research and Innovation Ecosystems at Regional Scale for Intelligent Cities, Transport and Energy

More info: https://rri2scale.eu/

Lars Martel Antoine Coenen

I do research on the geography of responsible innovation and sustainability transitions. What makes places stand out or lag behind in their ability to innovate, especially when it comes to grand societal challenges such as climate change and social inclusion? In my work, I have developed and applied different theoretical perspectives cutting across a range of disciplines and the boundaries of research, policy and practice.

EERAdata - Towards a FAIR and open data ecosystem in the low carbon energy research community

More info: https://www.eeradata.eu/

Coordinator

Valeria Jana Schwanitz

I am an energy economist with ample experience in energy system modelling. I also work with empirical analysis of human-nature interactions and how they are impacted by climate change and sustainable development. Currently I am researching citizen-led projects and innovation in the green energy transition in Europe.