Science Park Graz and ESA BIC Austria are partners in the consortium that will implement the Horizon 2020 project funded under the “Cluster facilitated projects for new industrial value chains (INNOSUP-01)” call: GALACTICA - Smart Industrial innovation as enabler to drive new value chains for textiles and aerospace.
Over the course of 30 months, GALACTICA will support new textile and aerospace industrial value chains based on advanced manufacturing, through empowering Industrial intelligent systems or Industrial Internet of Things. The purpose of the project is to change the mindset of SMEs across EU about digitalization and to enable them establishing new partnerships. It also aims to create and promote new value chains by providing technological vouchers for development of new minimum viable products, as well as coaching and support to SMEs to accelerate their path towards an MVP. The resulting development of new and innovative industrial goods, services and value chains driven by the supported SMEs will contribute to increased employment and growth in the EU.
Within the project, Science Park Graz will lead the organisation of two hackathons to foster open innovation and enable new value chains in the European Union. The hackathons will respectively take place in March 2021 and at the beginning of 2022. Both competitions will be structured in two phases, with a 2-week open innovation challenge in the 1st round and a 2-day hackathon in the 2nd one. Applicants will be asked to provide new solutions to combine advanced manufacturing with either aerospace or textile, or both. Participation is open to all SMEs, start-ups, students, and individuals (who will form new teams) within the European Union. Each hackathon will offer prizes for the overall winner (€25k), runner-up (€10k), the student winner (€10k) and student runner-up (€5k). Furthermore, thematic workshops and dedicated mentorship will be provided to participants during the competition.
Within GALACTICA project, Science Park Graz will also develop the coaching strategy that project partners will utilise to support SMEs in scaling up new value chains to global markets. The total project budget is EUR 5 million, out of which EUR 4 million are allocated to direct support of SMEs - including two open calls for proposals, two cross-border and cross-sectoral hackathons and travel grants. The project is coordinated by the Catalan technical textile cluster AEI Tèxtils, in partnership with seven European clusters and two innovation agents: ATEVAL in Valencia, CTA in Andalusia, NTT in Italy, CORALLIA in Greece, Suderelbe in Germany, PRODUCTECH in Portugal, EMC2 in France, EBAN in Belgium and Science Park Graz in Austria.
GALACTICA has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 872336
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