PNRR: the NODES ecosystem and projects for sustainable Aerospace and Mobility
After its official launch on 1 October 2022, the NODES ecosystem, financed by the Ministry of University and Research under the PNRR, brought together the partners of Spoke 1 dedicated to Aerospace and Sustainable Mobility to the Agora room of I3P-Incubator of Innovative Enterprises of the Politecnico to take stock of the progress of activities in view of the issue of the cascade calls for enterprises scheduled for April 2023.
The meeting was introduced by the Hub’s General Manager, Chiara Ferroni, and Professor Giuseppe Scellato of the Politecnico, coordinator of Spoke 1, who first of all outlined the general objectives of the ecosystem which, over its three-year period, will aim to create research and technology transfer chains within different technological and industrial fields: Sustainable mobility and aerospace (Spoke 1), Green technologies (Spoke 2), Culture and tourism industry (Spoke 3), Digital and sustainable mountain (Spoke 4), Healthcare and silver economy (Spoke 5), Primary agroindustry (Spoke 6) and Secondary agroindustry (Spoke 7). NODES is a system that aims at supporting applied research projects (Research booster), stimulating Innovation in SMEs (Innovation booster), improving skills through up-skilling and re-skilling actions (Competence booster) and supporting the creation of new enterprises (Acceleration booster) through total resources of more than 110 million euros.
The focal point of the meeting were the presentations of the three Flagship Projects of Spoke 1 coordinated by the Politecnico di Torino, which represent the topical trajectories through which the spoke aims to achieve the objectives set out on the various axes of the ecosystem: SPACE4YOU, H2Mobility and ELECTRO.
More specifically, the SPACE4YOU project, coordinated by Professor Sabrina Corpino of the DIMEAS-Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Professor Fabio Dovis of the DET-Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, aims to set up a distributed laboratory dedicated to “small satellites” and the new space economy. The topic of sustainable mobility, guaranteed through the use of alternative energy vectors such as hydrogen, will instead be addressed by the H2 Mobility project, coordinated by Professor Fabrizio Pirri of the DISAT-Department of Applied Science and Technology. Finally, the ELECTRO project, coordinated by Professor Paolo Guglielmi of DENERG - Energy Department will contribute to the development of systems and devices for recharging and managing electric vehicles, as well as to the analysis of new business models for sustainable mobility.
All these projects will be completed by the Politecnico thanks to the collaboration with the various partners of Spoke 1, i.e., University of Turin, Links Foundation, I3P Incubator, Envipark and CIM 4.0, which will be joined also by Politecnico di Bari, University of Catania and CNR ITM.
After dealing with project issues, the meeting addressed the methods of stakeholder engagement, which is essential to ensure the impact of the cascading calls that will be issued in favour of local enterprises. Miriam Pirra of Piemonte Innova, coordinator of the activities dedicated to Ecosytems’ Engagement and Development actions, then illustrated the tools that will allow to listen and map out the needs of enterprises with respect to the topics of interest for an active involvement in the research innovation roadmap.
On the topic of the cascading calls for which the Hub will have about €51.9 million at its disposal, of which about 7 million for Spoke 1, the Hub’s General Manager, Chiara Ferroni, then took the floor to introduce the various funding opportunities that will be provided for the companies involved in the ecosystem. There will be different types of intervention: Grants for the implementation of innovation projects and Vouchers for access to both training courses and business acceleration support services.