Author: Aniza Pourtauborde

Representatives from Aurora universities the University of Iceland and Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) led a discussion during the Science Café “Science for Impact: Changing the World through Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, hosted by Rannís, the Icelandic Centre for Research in Reykjavik.

Institutions Unite Around Societal Impact

 Held in collaboration with the French Embassy in Iceland, the University of Iceland (UI), and UPEC, the event highlighted the growing role of social innovation and entrepreneurship in creating positive societal change. The discussion brought together Rögnvaldur Sæmundsson, Pro-Rector for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Iceland, and Laurence Beierlein, Associate Professor at UPEC.

“Social innovation and entrepreneurship are important mechanisms for creating societal impact,” said Sæmundsson. “However, we have yet to develop a comparable support system as for profit-driven innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Beierlein further emphasised the responsibility of higher education institutions to equip students with the skills needed to respond to societal challenges. She stressed:

“The role of the academic world is to create the conditions that enable students to develop their skills and stimulate their creativity, so that they can devise and design social enterprise projects that benefit society whilst operating in a sustainable manner.”

The Science Café provided an opportunity for members of the public to engage directly with researchers and academic leaders on how universities can contribute to solving social, environmental and economic challenges through innovative approaches.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration As A Driver Of Change

 Being part of a European university alliance whose mission is to catalyse societal impact through collaboration, innovation and research, Sæmundsson also highlighted the crucial role of interdisciplinary collaboration.

“We can never achieve societal impact without interdisciplinarity,” he stated. “This includes the bridging between academic fields as well as combining it with knowledge and experience outside universities.”

Underlining the value of European Universities Alliances (EUAs), Beierlein explained how Aurora provides an established framework conducive to the implementation of collaborative, integrated research and education projects focused on social impact.

“Aurora enables students and lecturers to share their experience and understanding of unmet societal needs, existing or desirable solutions, and to exchange views on what actually could generate a positive impact for society,” she continued.

Both Sæmundsson and Beierlein point to the importance of partnerships that cross national and disciplinary boundaries. Through Aurora, and initiatives like the EURIDICE project, universities are increasingly working together to foster social innovation, strengthen global citizenship and ensure that academic knowledge contributes to meaningful and sustainable societal change.

Launched in February 2026, the third Aurora Call for Incentive Research and Education Collaboration, received 23 highly innovative project proposals eligible for consideration in both Key Action 1 (Exploratory and Collaborative Research Projects) and Key Action 2 (Thematic Schools). 14 projects were selected for funding, following a thorough evaluation process by the Aurora Research Council (ARC).

Growing Interest For Collaborative Research And Education Initiatives

The 2026 Aurora call highlighted the importance of an intersection between research and education, and hence included an added angle on education in two of the three Key Actions. This mixed and integrated approach has been particularly well-received by applicants, resulting in almost double the number of selected projects compared to last year. The 14 selected proposals comprise of five incentive research projects, six projects combining research and education dimensions, and three thematic schools.

Many of these proposals incorporate educational activities that align closely with Aurora’s long-term ambitions, including the development of joint micro-credentials, Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs), and learning opportunities that contribute to a common educational framework. By linking research outcomes directly to student learning experiences, the projects are expected to strengthen the connection between knowledge creation and educational innovation.

In addition to the selected projects, the call also attracted demand for short-term mobility opportunities, further demonstrating the interest in expanding international collaboration throughout the Aurora network.

New Funding Model Brings Greater Ambition and Innovation

Through the annual calls, Aurora incentivises the formation of exploratory collaborative research actions and research-driven educational actions in Aurora’s six thematic hubs of transdisciplinary research and education: Sustainability and Climate Change, Digital Society and Global Citizenship, Health and Well-being, Culture: Identities and Diversities, Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Peace Education.

With the additional contribution from Aurora universities, the available funding for these projects total up to €240,000, 50% higher than for the previous call, bringing average allocation of funds at approximately €17,000 per project. The increased investment signals a strong collective commitment from Aurora member institutions in supporting a diverse range of research, education, and thematic initiatives, while also creating opportunities for academics and students to address societal challenges.

Laureates of the Aurora Call for Incentive Research and Education Collaboration 2026

What does a healthy city actually look like and who gets to write the story? For five days in Essen, Germany, Master’s students in urban planning from the École d’Urbanisme de Paris (UPEC / Université Gustave Eiffel) and students of Cultural and American Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) worked together to answer these questions. The second edition of the co-taught Aurora seminar “Healthy Cities”, led by Prof. Dr. Barbara Buchenau (UDE), Prof. Dr. Marcus Zepf (UPEC), and Assistant Prof. Dr. Hélène Dang Vu (École d’Urbanisme de Paris), this year, the seminar widened its lens from the city center to the metropolitan scale.

A Region Looking For A New Narrative

The Western Ruhr faces a wicked challenge: how can a territory built on coal and steel evolve into a metropolitan region associated with health, well-being and nature without erasing the industrial identity that still defines it? Rather than starting with master plans and flagship projects, the workshop challenged students on the question of building and activating a shared territorial narrative.

Inspired by the Charleroi Bouwmeester’s approach of “scripting the city” through many small, coherent interventions, students explored how heritage reinterpretation, public space, mobility and cultural programming can together rewrite a region’s image.

From The Lecture Hall To The Field

The week combined site visits, guest input and self-directed group work. Students traveled to Düsseldorf to meet Andreas Kipar and the landscape consultancy LAND, whose nature-based solutions sparked one of the week’s most memorable moments.

“For hours, he developed this idea of healing cities in a very meaningful manner,” recalls Barbara Buchenau.

Back in Essen, students visited grassroots regeneration initiatives and discussed the city’s green transformation with Deputy Mayor Simone Raskob, who has steered Essen’s European Green Capital legacy for a decade. In mixed teams, they then developed concrete, small-scale visions for “Essen 2050”.

Students visit Essen city center

Students met with experts at landscape consultancy LAND

Friction That Becomes Productive

Bringing planners and cultural analysts into one room produces friction — and that is the point. When UDE students were asked to invent visions for 2050, the planning students immediately replied: “No, it’s programmation.” For students of cultural studies, invention means imagination; for planners, it means justifying a proposal from the existing situation.

Hélène Dang Vu sees the value precisely in this encounter: “UDE students bring a different way of reading places and looking at how words and images shape our perceptions, which may help planning students feel more free to make incredible proposals.”

Marcus Zepf stresses that planning today is a continuous intervention and permanent adaptation, involving civil society, politicians and experts alike — a process that needs communicators as much as it needs plans.

Health As The Next Luxury?

Several threads ran through the week: Essen’s struggle to become green inside against a culture attached to the car; the shift in Paris since the pandemic towards car-free streets, cooling islands and biodiversity; and the sobering realization that if green becomes the next luxury, health may follow, making inclusiveness and the dynamic nature of vulnerability central planning questions.

The group’s takeaway, however, was deliberately hopeful: a nature-positive city, in which nature is no longer the source of extraction, but something like a bank that you have to pay into if you want a future.

The partnership between two Aurora universities – UDE and UPEC – has already produced a jointly authored book chapter on methods for addressing urban needs in “messy cities”, co-written with stakeholders and students, and fed directly into a European research project on young adults’ struggle for urban health. Further down the line will come a series of podcasts on these collaborative initiatives intertwining both research and teaching.

From 5 to 9 October 2026 at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), doctoral and prospective doctoral students, and three researchers from Aurora universities came together for a week-long international retreat “Rising Voices: Emerging Scholars and Transdisciplinary Thinking”. An Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP), the retreat was organised by the Department of Anglophone Studies as part of the work undertaken within the Transdisciplinary European Research-driven Educational Hubs under the Aurora 2030 programme.

Two Tracks, One Common Goal

This BIP is the fourth edition of a format that has travelled across Aurora, from Iceland to Matrei and Olomouc, and has become a cornerstone of Aurora’s efforts to link research training with science communication and transdisciplinary collaboration.

Following a virtual kick-off on 28 September, the retreat in Essen ran along two interlocking tracks targeted to students and emerging scholars, and researchers. Within the student track, science communication experts Suzanna Whitby and Toby Wikström coached participants in preparation for the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition. Students learnt how to distill a complex research project to its core message, build a narrative from hook to structure, design a single compelling slide, and rehearse for an audience beyond one’s own discipline.

“It has been helpful communicating with scholars from diverse fields because they each have different takes and perspectives on your research,” says Emily Matejko, doctoral candidate from the University of Iceland. “They gave me important feedback in the work that I’m doing, ultimately to make it better and learn how to communicate it to a variety of audiences.”

Science communication training

Zulaia Johnston Da Cruz

Bára Jurášová

3MT Competition

The researcher track focused on building transdisciplinary research connections between Aurora universities. Prof. Barbara Buchenau, Prof. Dr. Florian Freitag and Zohra Hassan-Pieper explored collaborative research interests. Together, they developed ideas for joint teaching formats and shared micro-credentials, and discussed potential ideas that could be of interest for researchers within Aurora.

“Aurora brings cultures, countries, and people from diverse fields, and it’s truly transdisciplinary,” says Dr. Pavlína Flajšarová, associate professor in the Department of English Studies of Palacký University Olomouc. “What connects us are the educational goals and the research goals.”

Several moments brought both groups together: an opening Research Survival Challenge, a guided excursion into Essen’s industrial heritage, and paired coaching sessions, where researchers mentored students one-to-one prior to the 3MT Competition.

Highlight 3MT Competition

A key highlight of the week was the 3MT Competition, a short presentation format, where each student presented their research in three minutes on a single slide before a jury and an audience. Winners of the 3MT Competition are:

First Place
Emily Matejko, doctoral candidate from the Faculty of Education and Diversity at the University of Iceland. Her thesis entitled “Love Actually…Starts With Prevention” explores relationship experiences of adolescents with disabilities and how to make the prevention of violence more inclusive.

Second Place
Aleksandrina Pandurska, doctoral candidate from the Faculty of Philology at the South-West University “Neofit Rilski”. Her thesis entitled “Talking about Environmental Problems – New Strategies for Politicians” studies how political speech can affect individuals’ attitude to environmental problems.

Joint 3rd Place
Parinaz Mahdavi, doctoral candidate from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Iceland. Her thesis entitled “Same Diagnosis, Different Treatment” works on a specific mutation in skin cancer patients to understand how it can affect the behaviour of cancer cells in these patients.

Jan Flajšar, Master student from the Faculty of Law at Palacký University Olomouc. His thesis entitled “Light Pollution: Too Much Artificial Light, All Night” analyses sky-brightness data to identify where darkness is disappearing and provide reliable, evidence-based insights into the scale and distribution of the problem.

The programme strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration, research excellence, and the ability to communicate research effectively through science communication. One of the week-long retreat’s defining strengths is the interaction between students and experienced researchers. In creating such a community and opportunity, emerging scholars are able to speak about their research across disciplinary and national borders, and a group of researchers can already plan their next joint actions.

Watch the 3MT Competition Videos on Aurora YouTube 

On September 22, 2026, UNIPRENEURS honoured Hannes Rothe, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), whose field is “Sustainability and Innovation in Digital Ecosystems”. The award is co-sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and was presented by Matthias Hauer, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, and Johannes Steiniger, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Unlocking The Potential For Entrepreneurship

UNIPRENEURS award recipients are particularly successful university professors who actively encourage and support students in pursuing entrepreneurship and founding startups. The aim of UNIPRENEURS is to unlock the enormous potential of universities for spin-offs and thereby promote entrepreneurship. A distinguished board of trustees selected twenty UNIPRENEURS 2026 award recipients from more than 800 professors from across Germany who had been nominated by founders.

Professor Rothe is a Co-Lead of the Sustainability & Climate Change Hub, one of the six Aurora Educational Hubs. Together with the members of his Chair, he is actively involved in several Aurora teams working on: project Management, transdisciplinary european research-driven educational hubs, mobility and exchange, and, of course, social entrepreneurship and innovation. This year, his Chair organized a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on Digital Resilience in partnership with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Copenhagen Business School and Pavol Jozef Šafárik University. Besides that, the Chair of Professor Rothe, together with other partners from Aurora universities, is developing an existing platform into an AI-powered mentoring environment within the new European project “AURORA Seismic EIT-KIC”. Around 4,000 students across Europe are expected to benefit from it.

Professor Dr. Barbara Albert, President of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), is delighted with this achievement: “Professor Hannes Rothe not only leads a particularly innovative field of research, but also, as head of our ‘PlaceBeyond Bytes’ incubator, is highly successful in supporting startup activities from the initial idea through to the creation of spin-offs. His UNIPRENEURS award is also a great success for us as the University of Duisburg-Essen, as we place a very high priority on our transfer and innovation activities, including through our partnerships with the Ruhr region in the BRYCK Startup Alliance.”

Connecting Scientists With The Startup Ecosystem

The award recipient is an information systems scholar and heads one of the University of Duisburg-Essen’s two Co-Creation Labs, Place Beyond Bytes. The lab promotes business formation with a focus on digital technologies. Researchers and students are supported in developing digital solutions for a sustainable future. The incubator complements Rothe’s academic activities in research and teaching. His courses and mentoring activities have already led to AI-based solutions for inclusive personnel selection, new diagnostic procedures, automation in logistics and the energy sector, and other applications.

“Knowledge-intensive startups have always fascinated me because they usually involve complex products that address important challenges facing society. To connect scientists with the startup ecosystem, I co-founded the Digital Entrepreneurship Hub in Berlin and the Postdocs-to-Innovators Network about ten years ago. Since then, we have been developing state- and federally funded initiatives for entrepreneurship education in the field of deep tech,” says Rothe.

About Prof. Dr. Hannes Rothe

Information systems scholar, Professor of Sustainability and Innovation in Digital Ecosystems, University of Duisburg-Essen.

Rothe has been a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen since 2023. He heads the Co-Creation Lab ‘Place Beyond Bytes’ and serves on the board of the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innopreneurship (GUIDE). In 2024, WirtschaftsWoche named him one of the ‘Young Stars of Business Administration’.

His research findings have been published in leading journals in information systems and strategic management. He is a (co-)editor of several renowned academic journals and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (UK)and Graz University of Technology (Austria). From 2013 to 2021, he coordinated the development of entrepreneurship education at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2017, together with partners from Cambridge, Paris and Innsbruck as well as international companies, he founded the Postdocs-to-Innovators Network and contributed to several state- and federally funded initiatives promoting entrepreneurship education in the field of deep tech. In 2021 and 2022, he was an Associate Professor at the Grande École ICN Business School (Nancy, Paris, Berlin).

About UNIPRENEURS

UNIPRENEURS is an initiative aimed at strengthening spin-offs from German universities. It was launched by Matthias Hilpert and Martin Schilling. The Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft is responsible for organizing and implementing the joint initiative. The German Startup Association, Bitkom and AddedVal.io support UNIPRENEURS as partners.

Every three years, UNIPRENEURS presents Germany’s highest recognition for outstanding commitment to entrepreneurship at universities. The Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy jointly serve as patrons of UNIPRENEURS.

From 8 to 11 September 2026, the EAIE 2026 conference and exhibition brought together thousands of professionals from across Europe and beyond. Under the theme The Rhythm of Revolution, the conference explored how the higher education sector can navigate rapid change while creating new opportunities for collaboration, innovation and impact. Glasgow became a central hub for the community to discuss how to make internationalisation more inclusive, learning more connected, mobility more meaningful and Europe more resilient.

Aurora brought these ambitions to life through its booth at the Scottish Event Campus exhibition hall. Over fifty visitors dropped in to discuss international cooperations with representatives from Aurora universities present at the EAIE 2026 over the four days. In addition, Aurora showcased collaboration in action in four sessions that offered different perspectives on some of the key questions facing international higher education today.

Aurora team at dedicated booth at the EAIE 2026 exhibition hall in Glasgow, Scotland.

Making Internationalisation More Inclusive And Connected

One of the sessions featured Jitka Králová from Palacký University Olomouc (UP), who presented the poster “Empowering inclusion through Erasmus+ ICM: Developing adapted physical activity at the University of Sarajevo”. The initiative demonstrates how Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility helped support the development of the Adapted Physical Activity Programme, hence promoting inclusive education while strengthening institutional cooperation and creating new opportunities for knowledge exchange across borders.

Marina Vives Cabré from Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) brought another dimension to the conversation with the “Introducing the INSSPIRE COIL manual” poster. The manual offers practical guidance for implementing Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), helping universities create learning experiences that connect students and educators regardless of geographical location. The poster presentation shows that digital collaboration can open up internationalisation to a wider community, fostering joint approaches to shared challenges such as food systems, climate change and inclusive education.

Together, these contributions highlighted how internationalisation can be made both more accessible and more innovative, combining physical mobility with new forms of digital and collaborative learning.

Turning Collaboration Into Lasting Impact

Another session contribution from Aurora involved a panel session with Isabella Göschl from Universität Innsbruck (UIBK). Her panel “Turning mobility into professional growth: Institutional strategies that work” explored how international mobility can become more than a temporary experience, by supporting staff development and helping participants bring new skills, perspectives and connections back to their institutions.

The final Aurora session brought a particularly important perspective to the programme. Iryna Shteimiller from Karazin Kharkiv National University (KKNU) spoke on the panel on “University alliances joining forces with Ukraine: Building a resilient and competitive Europe”. During the session, she highlighted the role of European university alliances in sustaining meaningful cooperation with Ukrainian higher education institutions and contributing to a more resilient European higher education community. Iryna shared her own professional experience in Aurora, where her university actively participated in activities such as the Aurora Karazin Peace Education Hub, and co-creating educational offers and trainings.

From inclusive mobility and innovative learning to professional growth and solidarity with Ukraine, Aurora’s contributions at EAIE 2026 reflected the breadth of international collaboration across the alliance. Different perspectives, different approaches, but one common thread: when universities work together, internationalisation can become a powerful force for connection, innovation and positive change.

Aurora is thrilled to welcome Pierre Wolkenstein as the new President of UPEC. He will lead the university for a four-year term (2026-2030) and will also be part of the Aurora General Council. He succeeds to Karine Bergès who served as UPEC President for a year. Therefore, Aurora expresses its sincere appreciation to Karine Bergès for her dedicated contribution and looks forward to a new chapter of collaboration with Pierre Wolkenstein.

About Pierre Wolkenstein

Pierre Wolkenstein is a professor of medecine and hospital practitioner in dermatology at Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC).

He has been working in the dermatology department at the Henri-Mondor University Hospital (AP-HP) since 1992 and is the head of the department since 2018. His research focuses on rare genetic skin diseases, particularly neurofibromatosis. He’s been leading the Reference Center for neurofibromatoses at Henri-Mondor, one of the most active centers worldwide, since 2004. His scientific work includes around 485 indexed publications and an H-index of 66 (Web of Science), with recent work appearing in journals such as The Lancet.

On the institutional side, Pierre Wolkenstein has held numerous roles at national and European levels. He chaired the French Society of Dermatology (2008–2010), the French College of Dermatology Teachers (CEDEF, 2011–2013), and Section 50 of the National Council of Universities (2021–2024). At the European level, he represented France on the board of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) from 2013 to 2019, later chairing its Constitution and Development Committee (2016–2020) and its Ethics Committee (2021–2024).

High Interest For New Aurora Call

• 19 proposals under Key Action 1. Exploratory and Collaborative Research Projects and projects integrating research and education.
• 4 proposals under Key Action 2. Thematic Schools and Intensive Research Seminars.
• 22 proposals under Key Action 3. Short-term Secondments for Research and/or Training for Early-stage Researchers.

Rigorous Evaluation And Selection Process

The European Context