ENEX – Expert in Nanotechnology Exploitation Erasmus Project

Project Title

ENEX – Expert in Nanotechnology Exploitation

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project ‘ENEX – Expert in Nanotechnology Exploitation’ developed a short-cycle vocational qualification at graduate level in accordance with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) focused on the rapidly growing area of nanotechnology applications in industry.

Nanotechnology (NT) is a strongly emerging area of research and activity, opening up new markets, and leading to new products, processes and services in almost all industrial sectors. Because of this rapid development, there is an increasing demand of particularly qualified personnel in companies engaging in NT or in related industries, as well as in technology transfer organisations operating as intermediaries between NT research and industry.

The ‘ENEX Expert in Nanotechnology Exploitation’ is the ‘interface’ between laboratories and researchers developing nanotechnologies and the industry and health sector using them.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology and its wide range of applications, the ENEX must have a sound knowledge and understanding of the underlying NT principles, material properties and processing techniques that enable
– to draft innovative solutions based on NT for industrial product development, and
– to steer academic research in the field of NT to realistic targets that are application-oriented and market-led.
In addition, the ENEX must have competences to assess and manage the process from NT research to product innovation to take the right decisions at strategic level (‘do the right things’) as well as operational level (‘do things right’).

This project developed a sustainable platform for providing knowledge, skills and competences in the fields of nanotechnology and product innovation management in particular to key staff of NT companies or related industry, but also to researchers, intermediaries and other stakeholders of the NT research to market process. Basic modules offer less pre-qualified participants the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the subject matter and successfully complete the ENEX course.

More specifically, the project developed:

1. The COMPETENCE PROFILE of the ‘Expert of Nanotechnology Exploitation – ENEX’, structured according to ECVET guidelines.

The competence profile is based on a state of the art market, training and demand analysis in the field of nanotechnology as well as all relevant industries. In this way, it can be used as a point of reference for further training courses and form the basis for independent vocational training.

2. Two CURRICULA combining theoretical as well as practice-oriented lessons with methodologies and case scenerarios, the one on fundamentals of nanotechnology (materials and processing), the other on assessing and managing innovation processes,

Written by two leading universities, the curriculum offers up-to-date and high-quality knowledge of nanotechnology and innovation management. In addition to subject-specific modules, the course offers sound basic knowledge in order to familiarize trainees with the topic and acquire the ENEX certificate, even without extensive prior qualifications.

3. One E-LEARNING COURSE merging both curricula into a new interdisciplinary and innovative pedagogical concept,

An up-to-date platform, which is available on all end devices, enables the trainees to learn individually, monitor their own progress and carry out a qualitative self-assessment. Upon completion, the trainees receive a certificate signed by all partners.

In case of queries, the trainees are supported by the respective course leaders.

4. Appropriate methodologies and GUIDELINES for the validation, assessment and monitoring of the performance of ENEX trainees
according to European standards (CEDEFOP 2009).

The structure of the guidelines, validation and methdology is initially context-neutral. This makes it possible to transfer the outputs to other subject areas as well as teaching and learning projects. It can thus be used as a basis for completely different training courses.

Furthermore, it presents the methodological steps and processes of the ENEX project in an understandable and comprehensible way.

The consortium consists of 6 partners out of 5 European countries (DE, IT, NL, PL, RO): 1 private-sector consulting firm, 1 regional development agency, 1 research centre and 3 universities.

Thanks to an extensive dissemination plan, more than 30,000 people could be reached in the course of the project by various means.

As e-learning concepts are a fast growing market segment, a rapid diffusion of the ENEX products developed in this project can be expected for the time after end of the project.

The ENEX consortium is committed to supporting the use and transfer of the materials developed by us.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 325192 Eur

Project Coordinator

Internationale Agentur für Marketing und Technologietransfer GmbH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• AGENZIA PER LO SVILUPPO DELL’EMPOLESE VALDELSA
• UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE
• UNIWERSYTET LODZKI
• UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA DIN BUCURESTI
• CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE