05 Septemeber, 2023

Excellent success for the laboratories of the Ferrara Technopole, which is part of no less than 37 strategic industrial research projects out of the 105 funded by the Emilia-Romagna Region under the call for proposals "Industrial research projects aimed at the areas of smart specialization 2023- 2024" and intended for High Technology Network research laboratories, universities, research organizations and bodies, and innovation centers accredited by the Emilia-Romagna Region.

Of the 8 projects presented as lead partners by Unife's four accredited laboratories, 6 were accepted for funding for a total requested contribution of nearly 3 million euros. There are 21 partners and 26 companies involved.

These are joined by the laboratories' participation as partners in 35 research projects, of which as many as 31 were funded, of which 15 involved Mechlav, 8 TekneHub, 6 Terra&AcquaTech and 2 LTTA.

Manufacturing 4.0, natural resources and climate, materials innovation, sustainable and innovative mobility and motoring, clean energy, health, land and cultural heritage, artificial intelligence and big data are the main research areas of the funded projects that aim to integrate academia with business in order to address crucial challenges such as circular economy, climate change and digital transition.

Taking a quick overview of the 6 projects of which Unife is the Lead Partner, the 2 presented by the Mechlav lab deal with the optimization of production processes from an efficiency and sustainability point of view and the enablement of self-tuning solutions that allow machines to reconfigure themselves to extend their life time or to maintain high output quality upon change and a MAintenance platform useful for the sustainable REtroFItting of plants and machinery that are used in the Emilia-Romagna production system.

The projects developed by the TekneHub lab deal respectively with information management adapted for Building Information Modeling (AIM-eBIM) and museum repository objects, then with different access and preservation systems for management in the Metaverse environment.

Last but not least, the 2 projects that were financed at the Terra&Acqua Tech lab deal with the enhancement of marine biological resources from a circular economy perspective in order to obtain products of food and industrial interest and to develop new breeding techniques and technological processes for processing seaweed and pollutants in water effluents.

Satisfaction, consequently, with the results obtained demonstrating the high-level of expertise expressed by researchers at our university and the successful collaboration with enterprises and other regional players in the development of the innovation ecosystem.