Aalto University aims to become a “European University” together with six partners

Based on an initiative launched by the French president Emmanuel Macron in 2017, the European Union aims to set up a total of 20 European Universities by 2025 as closely-knit networks of existing universities.

The seven UNITE! (University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering) partner universities aim to use the alliance to create a European inter-university campus for students and scientists while at the same time incorporating regions and companies. UNITE! ranges from Finland to Portugal.

TU Darmstadt (Germany) acts as the coordinator and in addition to Aalto University, UNITE! includes the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), the Grenoble Institute of Technology (France), the Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain) and the University of Lisbon (Portugal).

They are all members of the CLUSTER network (Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research) of twelve leading European technical universities. Professor Katrina Nordström, previous Secretary General for Cluster, represents Aalto in the UNITE! project team.

As leading technical universities in their respective countries and regions, the partners are both central actors in their regional innovation ecosystems and drivers of the international networking of the regions. Via the multidisciplinary and multicultural education of their students, their aim is to prepare their graduates for the future demands of the labour market and enable them to solve global challenges.

The decision on the project will be made in the summer of this year. If the application from UNITE! is accepted, the alliance will receive support from the EU of up to five million euros for the first three years.

Contact:

Professor Katrina Nordström, katrina.nordstrom@aalto.fi, +358 50 560 8370

European Universities Initiative