Empowering innovators and entrepreneurs to develop world-class solutions

We asked Project Coordinator Dermot Brabazon to share how SMART-2M helps students and start-ups improve their entrepreneurial skills. SMART-2M is one of the pilot projects funded through the EIT HEI Initiative.

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your role in the project?

My name is Dermot Brabazon, and I am a professor of materials science and engineering at Dublin City University. I have been working on the development of advanced materials and processing technologies since 1995.

I’m currently the director of the Advanced Processing Technology Research Centre at Dublin City University, director of the Advanced Metallic Systems Centre for Doctoral Training, and deputy director of I-Form − the national SFI Research Centre for Advanced Manufacturing.

My teaching and research activities focus on the development of advanced technologies to improve production for the benefit of society.

Could you briefly tell us about the aim of SMART-2M?

Our vision is to become the leading European initiative that empowers innovators and entrepreneurs to develop world-class solutions to Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing challenges and to create growth and skilled jobs. We aim to do this by promoting and supporting institutional change in higher education institutions and by strengthening the contribution of these institutions to innovation ecosystems through the EIT knowledge triangle model (interaction between business, education and innovation).

How did the idea of the project come to be?

Our consortium partners have a lot of experience in working with companies both large and small. In the past, we often discussed how we could improve the innovation and entrepreneurship capacity of our students, institutions and company partners. When the EIT Pilot Call came out in 2021, we saw it as an opportunity to follow through on what we had previously discussed.

What have been the main achievements of your project to date?

From 27 September until 1 October 2021, we held a summer school where we had over 130 participants from countries such as Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Ireland, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia. We also had forty academics involved in the delivery of the content. During the event, we held a session for students on presenting their business ideas to introduce them to commercialising. I was very happy to see how our students changed their way of thinking and started considering marketing, finance, and strategy in their business plans. Approximately 49% of students and staff were female, which is great to see in what is often a male-dominated profession.

In February 2021, we held an online event where each participating start-up introduced themselves and had 10 minutes to give an elevator pitch to our entrepreneurship mentors. We then had breakout rooms where the company founders received advice on further developing their start-ups.

In addition, thanks to SMART-2M, Polytech Tours (University of Tours, France) is now a regional leader in education in Industry 4.0. Polytech Tours was awarded €108,000 plus an additional €30,000 from the Tours Métropole Val de Loire to develop an industrial chair. Polytech Tours is starting a local industrial cluster with international groups and small, medium- and intermedium-sized enterprises. SMART-2M has succeeded in bringing together research and teaching teams that do not usually collaborate. These teams now combine both hard and soft sciences to reflect the skills needed by future engineers and the challenges that await them. One of the objectives of the regional chair from Polytech Tours is to become a national chair.