INNOENERGY PATHWAYS · InnoEnergy Pathways

InnoEnergy Pathways

The ambition of the InnoEnergy Pathways programme was to offer a life-long training opportunity to researchers willing to value or to open their career to innovation development and transfer into eco nomic and societal value, in the field of sustainable energy. Techno-entrepreneurship and innovation dimensions were offered to researchers willing to develop additional and new competencies around their scientific and technological knowledge and experience. The programme objective was also to offer individuals with a science management background the possibility to apply their social sciences knowledge to specific technological developments in the framework of innovation-related projects. The success of InnoEnergy Pathways was defined in its ability to generate, through individual career choices and involvement, future "agitators" of this innovation-sound approach. A further objective of the programme was to contribute to the mobility of researchers in Europe. The successful applicants would have the unique opportunity to carry out their project in the context of in novation-related projects developed around various new energy technologies by InnoEnergy European partners. This fellowship programme was, in its first phase, limited to the incoming mobility scheme and intentionally focused on researchers with less than 10 years of research experience in technological sciences or in management sciences. Each fellowship will be awarded for approximately 2 years. The fellows received an extensive training offering from the InnoEnergy Ph.D. school or similar institutes. The evaluation and selection criteria were designed to allow the InnoEnergy Pathways programme to select the promising "innovation-agitators" the sustainable energy community is awaiting. Beside their scientific background the fellows would have to demonstrate (1) a sustained personal motivation for developing technological innovations (product, process, services or organization) in the energy field, and (2) a commitment to participating in the three parts of the InnoEnergy Pathways training programme: "disruptive period", summer or winter school, and workshop. The InnoEnergy Pathways Programme aimed to spark off and accompany the "blooming" of open- minded entrepreneurial researchers able to define their own pathways to become: o Agitators of techno-innovation oriented activities in labs, o Useful mediators between academic and industrial sectors, o Business creators that Europe is awaiting. Unfortunately, the socio-economic impact of the idea was very limited due to the considerable reduction of the program from the initial objective of 123 fellowships up to the final 3 fellow contracts. One of the reasons for this drop was that, as they were based on Erasmus fellowship rates, the monthly cost for these fellows was in post-financial crisis time too high for the host companies (even with the project's contribution to the fellowship rates, they paid less than that on the market for qualified staff). That said, it is worthwhile to underline that these 3 fellows finished their programs very satisfied, both because of the experience itself, and because they value it as an outstanding opportunity to improve and boost their starting careers All three research tasks were of high quality and an added value for the host organisation. They were the following: - Development of an Innovative optimization tool for electrochemical storage within stationary applications; - Smart optimisation of multi quality fuel mixtures for efficient operation of large scale PF boilers; - Development of new ultrasonic measurement module for the innovative instrument for express control of quality of natural gas. The host organisations who were involved in this program: - ENGIE Laborec in Belgium - GasQual AB in Sweden - University of Stuttgart in Germany Contact: Joan-Marc Joval (Project Manager) InnoEnergy - EU Business Unit Rue Guimard 7, 1040 Brussels - Belgium joanmarc.joval@innoenergy.com Website: www.pathways.kic-innoenergy.com

Data: CORDIS, © European Union