The forum focused on the three Grand Challenges of EU4DUAL, namely Future of Work, Green Economy and Healthy Living. All EU4DUAL Work Package Leaders and Project Managers attended the forum, as well as several other project staff from all nine partner universities. During the forum we worked on establishing links between the Grand Challenges and our work packages, ensuring that all work carried out in EU4DUAL is linked to one or more of the Grand Challenges. Furthermore, the Forum addressed the planned roadmap of each Grand Challenge, highlighting the plans for 2025 and beyond.
After a morning full of fruitful discussions, we had a campus tour given by Georg Wagner, Head of the Institute Applied Production Sciences. We attended a lecture and visited several large laboratory facilities on campus. Furthermore, Andrea Rieger gave the group a short tour of the FH JOANNEUM library. The day was rounded off with a learning café about the Grand Challenges and a classical Austrian dinner in the evening.
Maja Dragan, leader of the Grand Challenge Future of Work: “The Grand Challenge Forum in Graz last week was an inspiring experience. One of our key objectives was to further strengthen teamwork and develop innovative perspectives. People will be one of the key themes in the coming year: How can we better deal with the stresses of everyday life and the many challenges currently facing the European economy? The vision of Industry 5.0, as formulated by the European Commission, plays an important role here – a future that harmoniously combines technology and human well-being.”
The Grand Challenge Forum was not the only event that took place at FH JOANNEUM during the week of December 9-12. We also welcomed Work Packages 3 (Academic Coordination of Grand Challenges) and 5 (Dual Research for Social Impact) for their respective working group meetings on Monday, December 9th, and hosted the Project Management Committee for their second face-to-face meeting of the year on December 11th and 12th. In addition, the development team of the EU4DUAL Joint Dual Master on Green Economy (to be launched in September 2026) met on December 11th to lay the groundwork for the curriculum. With all these meetings we were lucky to host no less than 40 participants from all our EU4DUAL partner universities in Graz.
We are grateful to all participants who attended the meeting and look forward to continue working and growing with the EU4DUAL Alliance in 2025.
