Enhancing the potential and future career perspectives of the staff members

Through the staff exchange procedure, the beneficiaries will enhance their scientific knowledge and expertise, by receiving scientific training from his host team while working on the project, and additional specific training during the several research and industrial secondments. A new generation of biorefinery and eco-industrial systems researchers and practitioners will be prepared for the new workforce requested by green industries, the academia and the society. Besides, offering local training courses, each team will provide the stimuli and will prepare the conditions for developing communication and creative thinking skills through collaborative work, with activities and hands on experience on small-project deployment that will include critical thinking, project design, brainstorming sessions, time, data, and resources management analysis and implementation, the handling of complex data sets and the delivery of results during the network events, in writing and oral presentation. Beneficiaries from industry will be offered research experience, while academic researchers will be exposed and participate in management and entrepreneurial activities, which will build related skills and competencies. The intersectoral nature of the project assures that all ESR/ER from academic partnerswill carry out a secondment in industry in order to discover the environment and be trained in specific industrial equipment, pilot plants and methods. In parallel, during common events all staff memberswill receive specific courses related to project management and entrepreneurial skills, modalities and knowledge protection and exploitation training. In particular, industrials with experience in spin-off creation will offer best practices and methodology for implementation of spin-offs. At the same time, key-personnel from R&D departments of non-academic partners will be inspired by emerging, beyond the state of the art, BSE research activities in leading European universities, through targeted secondments in all project work packages. The regular projectevents will provide opportunities for developing networking and team-building skillsas well as social interactionsthat will be maintained during the whole duration of the network by the availability, on the dedicated network website, of an intranet forum for researchers and industry professionals, by the regular newsletter with updates and information and the use of social websites. It is envisaged that beneficiaries will be advocates for young people to develop careers in science and technology and particularly in topics related with biorenewables and sustainable technologies. They will also serve as key contributors to the wider European public discussion on these issues.

Developing new and lasting research collaborations, achieving transfer of knowledge between participating organisations and contribution to improving research and innovation potential at the European and global levels

Development of new and lasting research collaborations

The ultimate long-term objectives of RENESENG-II are to initiate and encourage agreements for R&I, technology and human resource exchanges between European universities, research institutions and the European and International industrial sector. This will lead to an enforced European research and will structure the research in the new field of design of biorefinery, biofuel and (bio)chemical process systems of the future, maximizing the beneficial exploitation of research results and generating high quality career opportunities for young scientists. In this regard, the partners of RENESENG-II will establish links to other BSE relevant projects, knowledge sharing platforms, public-private partnershipsand industries. Some examples refer to BRISK partners (i.e., Biofuels Research Infrastructure for Sharing Knowledge), Zelcorpartners(Zero Waste Lingo-Cellulosic Biorefineries by Integrated Lignin Valorisation), SABANA partners(Sustainable Algae Biorefinery for Agriculture and Aquaculture), CircEuit partners (Circular economy network, operation and business models) and members of the bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (3.7 billion Partnership between the EUand the Bio-based Industries Consortium)

Self-sustainability of the partnership after the end of the project.

The network program will have a significant impact for the partners involved that goes beyond training and research programs. Integration and exchange will mutually increase the partners’ workforce and effectiveness, reinforced by collaboration with external researchers with specific know-how and experience in the relevant fields. RENESENG-II is itself an evidence of this approach forpartnership sustainabilityas it builds upon research networks and repositories of tools established in RENESENG (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN) and expands it with two more key partners (Chalmers and Greene) with complementary expertise in the field of BSE. RENESENG-II has outstanding potential to provide new data, methods and tools tailored to a wide range of applications for waste biomass valorisation. The partnership aims to utilize these results of the project to promote circular economy activities, participate in future EU programmes, and utilize the network and its expertise to support collaboration at bilateral (or multilateral) level financed bynational programmes and regional industrial sectors. The plan for exploitation of RENESENG-II results includes a business plan for a future spin-off (D8.5) based on patented tools, models and expert knowledgeproduced by the project. The consortium will implementbest practices essentially coming from Industrial partners and their own spin-off creation. The aim is to directly exploit the results of the project (software, modelling, high-throughput platforms, biorefinery preliminary designs), their application in a wide range of waste biomass applications, the identified business development opportunities (D6.8), as well the services based on the exploitation of these results. Network partners expect to reach a clear image of the potential at the beginning of the fourthyear, where data on the most promising process systems will be available. The partnership will also be sustained at an academic level, by transforming the knowledge into educational materialfor a postgraduatecoursein the field of BSE theoryand applications. This will include lecture notes from the academic and industrial experts of the partnership, applications in case studies and projects. The course can be embedded in the educationalcurricula of individual partners, be available as an online course and organised as summer school.

Contribution to the improvement of the research and innovation potential within Europe and/or worldwide.

RENESENG-II intersectoral secondments and mobility will improveknowledge transfer to other European countries and internationally. The project’s network will function as a sharing community with parallel actions across different types of biorefineries (lignocellulosic, oil-based, water/algae, organic waste), links with pilots and industrial facilities for each type, research and material to share with the community, wiki-links, and series of activities (news, workshops), also in the form of webinars. The project will use the fellows as initial pool of students and proposed training program as a base fortraining curricula. On that bases, attempt will be made to specify and define relevant research areas that exist within the project and beyond, identify initial pool of respective institutions and companies and set up the process of expansion within and after the lifetime of the project in a form of an agreement. The co-operation is designed to work into both directions: University researchers will gain industrial experience through an obligatory secondment to the industrial partners and access to industrial pilot plants and technological platforms and through attending industrial courses, particularly those on complementary skills and spin-off best practices and visits in industrial sites. In turn, industrial partners will benefit from the applied tools and technologies developed by the fellow integrated in the network and will empower their own human resources with enhanced R&D and R&I skills or find experimented and high qualified skills to recruit for their needs. The experience gained should benefit both universities and industry and will serve as a practical example for future public-private partnerships. This experience in cooperation will permit the development of long lasting collaborations in the future through agreements for industrial secondmentsof fellows and access to industrial platforms and sites, discussions for further collaboration through research projects financed by industry, national science foundations and agencies, and EU programmes, and including industrial expertise in courses andtraining modules during training schools and university curricula.

Quality of the proposed measures to communicate, disseminateand exploitthe project results

Communication and dissemination strategy and results

The communication and interaction of the partners will utilize several channels:

• RENESENG-II website and (E-)newsletter. A dedicated website will be created and a restricted domain will be constructedwhere only the consortium will have access. The RENESENG-IIe-newsletter (2 timesper year) will be circulated among all participants and will contain relevant information sent by allteams. A special edition, excludingclassified information, will be also available to the public and the open scientific community.
• Communications andprogress meetings. Internetwill be used routinely to exchange information and to facilitate discussion between partners on urgent matters arising from the project. Direct contacts between the researchers in different teams will be strongly encouraged andfacilitated by the creation of a blog within the restricted area of the Network website.
• Visits. Teams that are involved in the same scientific objectives will be expected to interact frequently. Visits by researchers to the collaborating teams will take place regularly throughout the project. These will be determined by the outcome of the project. The project coordination committewill be expected to visit the other teams’ institutions at least once in the duration of the project.
• Short scientific reports will be produced every six months by the team leaders and circulated within the network. Comprehensive scientific reports will be produced every year by the team leader and integrated by the coordinator and circulated to all members of the Network.

Scientific discoveries achieved by the consortium will be disseminated by publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals, participation in national and international conferences, press releases and publication on the consortium website. In addition, the training School and the international conference will be used to disseminate the results and concepts of the training and research components of the program to students and scientists outside of the consortium. Industrial partners will also have the possibility to present the results in their companies and create new interactions.

Expected impact of the proposed measures.

The project envisages to be a paradigm of using BSE tools in the large possible extent for systematic knowledge creation and decision making. The proposed measures for communication of the results between the partners and dissemination to the widest possible public refer to research, development and deployment of solutions in application domains with ever increasing societal interest, as they are strongly connected with the efforts for a circular economy. As a concept, steering decision making and moving from experience based heuristics to systematic knowledge extraction, classification and utilisation is inherentin the logic of modern societies, despite how challenging the task can be. Thus, the main impact of the proposed measures will be to showcase successful application of this truly innovative approach to prove that the complexity of the problems can still be managed by progress in the BSE field. At the deployment level, the strong intersectoral approach of RENESENG-II is a foundation for realistic applications from an industrial perspective. RENESENG-II builds on a theoretically sound ground of systems engineering, but its true merit is to be identified by industry (and society) as an applicable approach in every day practices, thinking, strategic decision, and policy making. All academic partners in the project maintain a significant networking with regionalindustries and organisations that will give to the measures applied for dissemination and exploitation of the results a multiplicative effect. This is not only achieved as a result of the specific applications of RENESENG-II but also because of the impacton the researchers engaged in the project; RENESENG-II aims to continue on the innovation path of RENESENG toward a new generation of engineers in the BSE field.

Intellectual property rights aspects and exploitation of results.

The project steering committee will manage and coordinate patent applications and IPR protection activities within the consortium. We expect the outcome of RENESENG-II to include patentable objects, mainly in the form of software tools for property assessment and process simulation in the non-conventional area of waste biomass valorisation. In some cases new reaction data will be generated (e.g., in WP6, ARKEMA) to support simulations and new valorisation solutions. The coordinator will also ensure that all publications and presentations by members of the project consortium -including all funded fellows -acknowledge the EU financial support received. This acknowledgement should specifically refer to the Marie Curie RISE action, as well as the project number and acronym

Quality of the proposed measures to communicate the project activities to different target audiences

In order to popularise and advertise science and research in the covered areas to the general public, the RENESENG-II network will initiate a number of Outreach activities, and also actively participate in a number of activities, including:

• Inclusion of a ‘general public’ area in the RENESENG-II website
• The set up of a science blog dedicated to the field
• RENESENG-II ito be identified as a valuadentity set (creation of logo, brochure and a slide template)
• General info video clip info on YouTube and Euronews TV
• Writing articles for non-scientists websites and magazines;
• Being involved with science fairs and public shows (all in their hosting countries)
• Creation of RENESENG-II Facebook page
• Participation to Science Weeks for attracting young people
• Participation in Science in Schools eventsand creation of pedagogic materials for youngpeople
• Information campaign of RENESENG-IIactivities in international events..

It is expected that each recruited fellow will contribute to at least 2 outreach activities per year. An annual report will summarize all the outreach activities of fellows