THE PROJECT:

WIDEX: KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER FOR WIDENED EU EXCELLENCE IN ADVANCED GREEN TECHNOLOGIES, SUSTAINABILITY AND RESEARCH MANAGEMENT

Critical and Strategic Raw Materials are key to the Green Transition and thus crucial for Europe's economy, particularly within strategic sectors. As reflected in the Critical Raw Materials Act approved in March 2024, there is an impending need to fulfil these demands within European borders, reducing reliance on third countries using green and non-invasive technologies. In Slovakia, the essential part of reserves and productions of mineral resources are located in the Košice region, where the Technical University of Košice, a distinguished university with its Mining Faculty (Faculty of Mining, Ecology, Process Control and Geotechnologies) and the Faculty of Metallurgy, Materials and Recycling aimed at processing and recycling, serves as the primary reference centre.

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THE AMBITION

The WIDEX consortium, formed by top-class leading institutions, aims to reinforce TUKE’s EU positioning through a strengthening knowledge transfer plan based in three main strategy lines focused on:

  • Exploration, recovery and monitoring
  • Sustainability, circularity and social assessment
  • Research management capacities, and administrative skills

The WIDEX implementation will include the creation of a new cluster in Central Europe, and an Excellence Virtual Centre/Stakeholder platform around the green and non-invasive technologies ecosystem.

THE EXCELENCE

The WIDEX consortium, led by the coordinator TUKE, a key reference centre and the leading university in Slovakia, has been constructed carefully including specialists in each field and considering the potential for knowledge transference in technologies and skills that are key to complement and boost TUKE’s expertise and position them as a key reference centre at a European level. The knowledge transference will be carried out following three strategic lines:

1) Green and Non-invasive technologies for CRMs’ exploration, recovery and monitoring of CRM (ISMC, FRAUNHOFER, IDENER, LAPLAND UAS. ICAMCYL);
2) Sustainability, Circularity and Social Assessment (MNLT, CONSENTIA, ICAMCYL)
3) research management, coordination capacities and administrative skills (PÔLE AVENIA, ISMC, MNLT, ICAMCYL).
Additionally, the development of the Industrial Cluster and the Excellence Virtual Centre will be carried out by expert partners ISMC, ICAMCYL, MNLT and TUKE.