A new €3.7m project will see seven European universities investigate the role higher education facilities have to play in pushing innovation and regional development.
The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain will join six other universities on a four year project into the role of universities in innovation and regional development.
The project forms part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network programme and the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU) network.
It will have a budget of €3.7m and will see the University of Stavanger (UiS) in Norway co-ordinate the project.
Also involved is Aalborg University, Denmark; University of Lincoln, UK; the University of Twente, the Netherlands; Linköping University, Sweden; and the University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Nine firms will work alongside the seven universities from seven European countries on the Role of Universities in Innovation and Regional Development (RUNIN) project. It aims to prepare international research on regional innovation and the role universities play in developing and growing a region.
It is also hoped the RUNIN project will strengthen ties between ECIU members, as well as push their presence in their respective regions.
![Image description: The focus of the image is a portion of LDN 1641, an interstellar nebula in the constellation of Orion. In this view, a deep-black background is sprinkled with a multitude of dots (stars) of different sizes and shades of bright white. Across the sea of stars, a web of fuzzy tendrils and ribbons in varying shades of orange and brown rises from the bottom of the image towards the top-right like thin coils of smoke.] CREDIT ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Schirmer (MPIA, Heidelberg)](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Euclid_peers_through_a_dark_cloud_s_dusty_veil-218x150.jpg "Discovering the dark universe and a stellar nursery: Euclid searches through Orion constellation")
