Launching TORCH - Research and Innovation Cooperation of CHARM-EU

24.02.2021.

At the beginning of February, the kick-off meeting of TORCH, the research and innovation focused project of CHARM-EU university alliance was held online with the participation of ELTE colleagues. CHARM-EU (Challenge-driven, Accessible, Research-based, Mobile European University), a university alliance called into being under the auspices of European Universities Initiative, entered a new phase of its operation this year.

While in the CHARM-EU project the partner universities, including ELTE, form a cooperation focusing on education, the TORCH project concentrates on the other main function of universities: research. The objective of TORCH (Transforming Open Responsible Research and Innovation through CHARM) is to develop a research and innovation strategy for the alliance shaped by the five research universities. Therefore, the implementation of the project, supported by Horizon 2020 – EU’s research and innovation framework programme – is supervised by the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (EC DGR&I) with the contribution of the Research Executive Agency (REA) as the governing authority.

During the two-day-long virtual kick-off meeting held on February 8-9, 2021, EC and REA representatives, together with those of the partner universities, reviewed project plans as well as strategic and technical steps to be taken for its implementation. They also outlined the overall and specific objectives of the project, revised main documents that form the base of common work, and discussed briefly the 10 work packages to be executed.

Within this project, ELTE is responsible for the leadership of the Open Science and the Pilot work packages.

The latter comprises of testing certain selected elements based on work package results and the planned research policies and strategy.

In January 2019, Eötvös Loránd University officially entered an alliance with the University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Utrecht and the University of Montpellier founding the CHARM-EU (Challenge-driven, Accessible, Research-based, Mobile European University) Alliance. This partnership has been one of the 54 associations composed by Europe’s most excellent institutions in tertiary education which had submitted their proposals to the „European Universities Initiative” call of the European Commission. 17 of these 54 were awarded in June 2019 with the opportunity to start their work aiming for the completion of their programmes in the frame of a new type, mobility-based, multilateral cooperation.