News – Page 4 – CATALISI

Reform of research assessment & culture: CATALISI workshop at AUMC

As part of the CATALISI project and series of workshops conducted with universities, AUMC & VU institutions, with stakeholders from both AmsterdamUMC (location VUMC) and VU (Amsterdam Free University) organized a workshop on June 30^th.

CATALISI gathers stakeholders from quadruple helix (academia, public sector, business and civil society representatives). In this workshop, the first of more to come, stakeholders were invited to think along about two main intervention areas that will be the focus for institutional transformation:

1) Recognition of qualifications and research careers and

2) Reform of research assessment.

Topics related to both areas can be connected to a focus on improving Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). Related topics are for example: Research culture; research integrity; open science and RCR education.

The group of stakeholders was, based on expertise, divided into two thematical sub groups; the first focusing on research culture, and the second on embedding sustainably RCR education. The stakeholders contributed in lively sessions, sharing their expertise on these topics. Policy makers, researchers in RCR, and experts in specific topics all had valuable ideas about specifying the goals for CATALISI, analyzing potential barriers for the implementation of institutional transformation and highlighting needs and expectations, values, and concerns for different stakeholders perspectives.

This workshop provides a great starting point for the launch of CATALISI at AUMC and VU, engaging stakeholders, and gathering their expertise and feedback to inquire possible interventions, and make sure these interventions will be useful and feasible.

Transformational changes underway – CATALISI workshop at UJI

As part of the series of CATALISI workshops that aim at transformation changes withing seven universities, on July 3^rd CATALISI partners Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, Spain) as well as European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) introduced the project and engaged stakeholders while focusing on CATALISI intervention areas.

UJI’s workshop was divided into two parts. The first one was focused on UJI’s internal needs as an implementor whereas the second one focussed on the interaction between internal and external stakeholders (academia, business, civil society, public administrations) that exchanged and discussed their experiences.

The topics that were discussed in the first session were “research assessment, recognition of research careers and gender equality” and “public engagement and citizen science”. The participants were divided into these two thematic groups according to their expertise. Later, in the second part of the session, internal and external stakeholders discussed, again in two separate groups (according to their expertise), the topics of “gender equality” and “public engagement and citizen science”.

The diversity of the internal stakeholders, as well as the strive for the necessary transformation could be seen through the ones attending the session – from UJI’s vice rectors (of research, social policies and innovation and science outreach) to technicians with expertise on specific areas. Also, external stakeholders from different business in Castellón (specially focused on tourism), local administrations and civil society (ethical committee for tourism, local foundation for gender equality) attended the second part of the session.

The workshop was closed as a very successful one, engaging the stakeholders from quadruple helix and providing necessary feedback to implementors and just first in the line, so stay tuned for more information and insights that our stakeholders will share!

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CATALISI partner, University Jaume I at ETHNA SYSTEM Final Conference on Responsible Research and Innovation

On 15^th and 16^th of June, members of the University Jaume I CATALISI team had the opportunity to participate in the ETHNA SYSTEM Final Conference on Ethics and Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice in Castellón de la Plana (Spain).

ETHNA is a European project focused on promoting internal management to ensure responsible research and innovation (RRI) within universities. Elsa González Esteban, from UJI’s research group “Ethics and Democracy” and also a CATALISI member, is the main researcher of the project.

CATALISI member Carlota Carretero made a notable impact by presenting a poster that explained the project’s general approach, intervention areas, and UJI’s specific transformative goals for the institution.

“It was a fantastic opportunity to meet and exchange views with experts on research assessment, ethics and innovation”

Carlota Carretero

Top management representatives from UJI’s government attended the conference, as well as national and international experts in research innovation and research ethics, such as Eva Méndez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain) or Ana Marušić (University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia). During the poster walk, experiences and impressions were shared with other participants, including colleagues from APRE, CATALISI coordinator. The conference was a great chance to learn more about the transformations currently being carried out in research assessment, open access and research ethics. In addition, its content came across as inspiring and as a great next step to discuss different viewpoints on complex issues with such a huge impact on researchers’ careers and science development.

“This conference set a great environment for sharing knowledge and experiences with participants from different institutions and countries”

Ramón Feenstra

Career Development ETHNA SYSTEM Final Conference innovation Internal Management Open Access Research Assessment Research Ethics Research Innovation Responsible Research Science Development Transformative Goals UJI CATALISI University

Acceleration Services in support of the institutional transformation of Higher Education Institutions

On May 30th, 2023, APRE, a partner of the WIDERA NCP project ‘WIDERA.NET’ and the coordinator of the CATALISI project, conducted a training session for WIDERA National Contact Points.

NCP WIDERA.NET identifies and shares good practices within the NCP community and raises the standard of support provided by NCPs to applicants. It also enables the transnational network of NCPs to better address cross-cutting objectives such as gender equality and open science.

The training focused on “Acceleration Services in support of the institutional transformation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)”. The APRE team, working on the CATALISI project, along with two other projects funded under the same topic, namely the aUPaEU project coordinated by Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and the Accelerate_FutureHEI project coordinated by University Industry Innovation Network BV, presented their approaches to supporting HEIs in implementing strategies and individual pathways for institutional transformation.

We believe that training events organized with CATALISI sibling projects that deal with Institutional transformation of HEIs through acceleration services, are of foremost importance to create synergies and share points of view on how to achieve sustainable institutional transformation of research organizations towards R&I. As a follow-up of the training event, the three projects are in fact starting to collaborate on the development of policy recommendations for HEIs' institutional transformation.

Laura Mentini, APRE Tweet

During the training, the coordinators provided an overview of the aims and methodologies of their respective projects. They emphasized how acceleration services can assist HEIs in successfully implementing transformation strategies and roadmaps. These services include creating a shared knowledge base, offering coaching services, and providing a virtual meeting platform for HEIs to connect with peers, ecosystem actors, investors, and public funders.

The training concluded with an engaging Q&A session, where participants delved deeper into how these projects can be utilized to support the institutional transformation of HEIs in Research and Innovation (R&I) across Europe.

What’s next?

Follow CATALISI and stay tuned for our upcoming activities:

Call for members to join CATALISI Community of Practice has been launched!

Be part of a lively group of people interested and experts in institutional transformation of HEIs. You will advise and guide our Implementers on the topic of Institutional transformation towards the future, and at the same time benefit from knowledge sharing, networking and capacity building opportunities during the project.

September 2023: First Webinar on HEIs institutional transformations in the domain of “Gender & Inclusiveness”: follow CATALISI learning hub to watch the recording and access the materials.
Upcoming Mutual learning activities and workshops for Implementers and CoP members: stay tuned!

More about our “sister” projects:

Accelerate Future HEI (Accelerating support for university transformation) will apply a robust, comprehensive methodology that builds on the status quo and develops a connected vision and set of activities that provide each institution with a tailored transformation action plan. Experts specialised in implementing acceleration services will guide the universities through coaching, training and international knowledge exchange to help them achieve their desired entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement goals.

aUPaEU (A University Partnership for Acceleration of European Universities) ultimate purpose is to develop methodologies, sustainability plans, coaching services, and tangible digital technologies to give an acceleration agora. HEIs, university networks, and alliances will achieve integrated, shared, and long-term R&I transformations through this accelerated agora. These transformations are intended to focus on six major areas of the HEI transformation agenda: capacity, infrastructure, and resource sharing; researcher career attractiveness; collaboration with R&I ecosystem actors; open science; societal outreach; and gender equality.

Accelerate Future HEI acceleration services aUPaEU catalisi project coaching engagement entrepreneurship gender equality good practices higher education institutions Horizon Europe innovation institutional transformation international knowledge exchange methodology NCP community NCP_WIDERA.NET open science training university transformation WIDERA Network

Transformational changes with CATALISI stakeholders – KTU workshop

Transformations are successful when they are supported not just by university management but also by academic community, as well as by other university stakeholders. That is why it is very important to understand the local context that the changes are happening in, the values and expectations of different stakeholders that might serve as promoters and supporters of these changes. KTU team has started the analysis of local context from stakeholder mapping for each of the intervention areas, identifying key actors who might contribute with insights about the needs and expectations for the intervention actions.

All key stakeholders, both internal and external, were invited to participate in a workshop, co-led together by KTU team – prof. Egle Butkeviciene, prof. Audrone Telesiene and prof. Aiste Balzekiene – and Joanna Karas (ENoLL) on June 1^st 2023 at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU).

The workshop has invited representatives of all 4 quadruple helix for co-creative work on identifying barriers, needs, expectations and framework conditions that can influence the institutional transformation.

Kaunas University of Technology has decided to focus on the three major intervention areas:

(1) Human capital;

(2) Research Modus Operandi;

(3) Finance.

The discussions were focused around the 5 challenges (interventions areas) that KTU identified as the major ones to foster institutional transformation:

How to ensure the talent circulation and encourage mobility of employees?
How to accurately address lifelong learning?
How to strengthen human capital and researchers’ capacities?
How to enhance public engagement and inclusion of stakeholders, to solve social challenges?
How to achieve sustainability in research funding, including important areas such as attraction of project funding, finances from scientific publications, and ensuring social impact of research?

The workshop took a co-creative approach, where stakeholders were working in small groups sharing ideas and experiences, and then summarizing and presenting results of group work in a plenary discussion.

The results of the workshop will be the major input for the further work, developing the strategy on how these 5 challenges are addressed with actions, supported with acceleration services.

CATALISI consortium consists of 3 partners acting as facilitators and 7 as implementers. Stay tuned for more stories and workshops to come!

academic community acceleration services barriers co-creative approach expectations finance framework conditions human capital human capital strengthening intervention areas key actors KTU lifelong learning local context mobility needs project funding public engagement quadruple helix research funding sustainability research modus operandi scientific publications social challenges social impact stakeholder inclusion stakeholder mapping stakeholders strategy development talent circulation transformational changes university management workshop

CATALISI Community of Practice: Join the Knowledge-Sharing Movement for HEI Institutional Transformation

CATALISI is an EU-funded project that aims to help and support Higher Education Institutions to successfully implement a strategy and individual pathway for institutional transformation through the adoption of acceleration services. These services are designed to facilitate and accelerate institutional transformations in the field of Research and Innovation, which will strengthen European Universities collaborations and alliances as lighthouses of European values. CATALISI will analyze how the governance of Higher Education Institutions can be changed by considering the governance as a way in which societal and state actors intentionally interact in order to transform Science, Technology, and Innovation systems by regulating issues of societal concern.

What are we looking for?

The CATALISI Community of Practices (CoP) is a group of individuals from diverse sectors who share a common interest in institutional transformation in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Members of the CoP collaborate through joint activities and discussions, sharing experiences to build collective knowledge in their shared domain of interest.

The role of the CoP is to provide the project with relevant expertise, methods, stories, tools, and documents/publications, while simultaneously benefiting from the knowledge generated by CATALISI. In this way, the CoP creates a safe learning environment that allows individuals to learn by doing. The CoP is supported by a knowledge sharing online platform that maintains the community alive.

CoP members are selected from categories such as education and research, digitalization and ICT, marketing, policy-makers, funding organizations, and civil society. The activities within CATALISI include counseling and mentoring services throughout the process of HEI institutional transformation, living labs and Mutual Learning workshops, creation of market-based opportunities, peer-to-peer activities for human capital and capacity building development, and enhancement of HEI digitalization and Open Science access.

Participating in the CoP offers several benefits, such as knowledge sharing, access to recent project results and outputs, learning opportunities, networking with other stakeholders, visibility, and recognition within respective fields, and providing feedback, insights, and recommendations to enhance the relevance, quality, and impact of project activities and outputs.

Members of the CoP are invited to contribute on a voluntary basis by sharing their knowledge and experience in the field of institutional transformation in HEIs, advising implementers on best practices, innovative approaches, and potential challenges related to institutional transformation, providing strategic support and guidance to Higher Education Institutions in their process of governance transformation, and participating in the CoP Mobilization and Mutual Learning activities.

Want to join? Check out our Terms of Reference and apply below!

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CATALISI Kick Off Meeting

CATALISI is an EU-funded project consisting of 11 partners from 8 EU Member States. The consortium gathered in Rome on 26th and 27th of January to kick off the project that will last 36 months and whose aim is to help and support Higher Education Institutions (HEI) to successfully implement a strategy and individual pathway for institutional transformation.

The project will analyse how the governance of Higher Education Institutions can be changed, considering the governance as a way in which societal and state actors intentionally interact in order to transform Science Technology and Innovation systems, by regulating issues of societal concern.

While the first day of the kick off meeting focused on sharing and accessing the expertise of the partners, division of the tasks and timeline of activities throughout the project, the second day was dedicated to discussions on stakeholder engagement. CATALISI will provide 7 acceleration services in 3 domains and split its efforts between the implementors and facilitators. In addition to the acceleration services, CATALISI will initiate a dedicated space on its website for exchange of knowledge, matchmaking and funding opportunities as well as gathering inputs from implementors and third parties (Learning Hub).

In order to boost the impact of the project and apply CATALISI findings wider, the project will engage in creating a Community of Practice composed of a group of people who share expertise and experiences in institutional transformation in HEI.

Partners who will participate and are in charge of successful implementation of the project are:

Stay tuned for next CATALISI activities!

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Press Release: CATALISI project

CATALISI is an EU-funded project that started in January 2023. With the aim to help and support Higher Education Institutions to successfully implement a strategy and individual pathway for institutional transformation, CATALISI will introduce the adoption of acceleration services. The project will analyse how the governance of Higher Education Institutions can be changed, considering the governance as a way in which societal and state actors intentionally interact in order to transform Science Technology and Innovation systems, by regulating issues of societal concern.

In the 36 months of the project, 11 partners from 8 EU Member States will implement the project dividing its efforts between implementors and facilitators.
CATALISI will offer 7 acceleration services and tackle 3 domains:

Research careers and talent support
Open science and public engagement
Sustainable research and education

CATALISI Implementors are the Higher Education Institutions which will introduce and implement reforms in their structures.

CATALISI Facilitators will contribute to the creation and implementation of acceleration services, knowledge transfer and implementation of co-designed activities.

CATALISI Facilitators are: AGENZIA PER LA PROMOZIONE DELLA RICERCA EUROPEA | ERNST & YOUNG BUSINESS SCHOOL SCUOLA DI MANAGEMENT SRL | F6S NETWORK IRELAND LIMITED | EUROPEAN NETWORK OF LIVING LABS IVZW

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