Facing the urgent challenges of climate change and the necessity for a transition towards more sustainable and efficient energy systems, the industrial sector, with the steel industry at the forefront, is compelled to significantly cut energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The steel sector, accounting for 9% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions and consuming an average of ~5.2 MWh of primary energy per ton of steel produced, is at the heart of this challenge. The SYRIUS project, spanning 54 months, aims to revolutionize this landscape by integrating a 4.2 MWel Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell (SOEC) for producing 100 kg/h of green hydrogen into a real Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) plant. Hydrogen will feed a 280tsteel/h – 84 MWth slab reheating furnace, demonstrating the potential to reduce steel reheating process CO2 emissions by 5,600 t/year during the project and up to 100% with full hydrogen feeding. By generating steam through furnace off-gas heat recovery, implementing by-product oxygen recovery in the furnace (allowing additional savings of 430 tCO2/year in SYRIUS and of 2% fuel input in future expansion) and analysing options for water recycle, SYRIUS seeks to minimize external energy consumption and sets industrial circularity at the project core. With a viable business case centred on process integration, SYRIUS aims to strongly enhance market opportunities in the short to medium term by driving industrial green hydrogen costs below 2.2 €/kg, surpassing the SRIA targets for 2030. By preserving end-product quality at competitive costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lowering hydrogen costs, and creating new direct and indirect jobs, SYRIUS will play a pivotal role in enhancing the circularity of the EU steel sector. A first-of-its-kind TRL7 plant, ready to be scaled up, extended to other industries, and replicated globally thanks to the unique geographic coverage of the technology providers in the SYRIUS consortium, will showcase innovation in action.

Prolonged drought due to climate change has a severe impact on agriculture, requiring measures to secure yield stability under water-shortage conditions. This project aims to be a BOOSTER for developing innovative and sustainable strategies to create climate resilient and drought tolerant cereals. Two synergistic strategies will be implemented to achieve this goal. Firstly, a new approach will identify genomic variants in regulatory regions functionally associated with drought tolerance. Novel regulatory elements underlying resilience will inform efficient breeding efforts to create new drought tolerant cereal varieties. Secondly, novel seaweed extracts and microbial biostimulants will be developed as an eco-friendly approach for improving drought resilience. The two strategies will be tested in two cereals with different responsiveness to drought: European maize and Ethiopian teff, a cereal with high genetic similarity to the desiccation tolerant Eragrostis nindensis. BOOSTER will improve drought tolerance in both maize and teff, while simultaneously exploring the potential for transferring species-specific drought responsive features. By exploiting natural genetic variation to achieve drought tolerant genotypes and by developing biostimulants derived from living organisms, BOOSTER will take advantage of the already available natural resources to steer our agriculture towards novel drought tolerant varieties. Importantly, BOOSTER approaches and results are transferable to other crops. A tailored communication/dissemination strategy and a stakeholders’ engagement plan will ensure the expected outcomes and impacts. The project will produce increased maize- and teff-derived biomass resources under harsh drought conditions, will lower irrigation requirement, will strengthen competitiveness of European and African agri-food industry, and will provide concrete examples for improving public awareness about a sustainable use of bio-based technologies.

We are facing complex societal challenges, such as protecting the environment, promoting healthy living and fighting climate change. To address such challenges, citizens must be equipped with the ability to responsibly engage in scientific discussions and decisions. Traditional formal schooling has not been able to achieve this goal: There is a wide-spread lack of scientific knowledge at all level of society and students' interest in science tends to decline within school years. One reason is the decontextualised way in which science is taught. MULTIPLIERS aims to facilitate the transition of schools into innovative and open collectors of new ideas, practices, scientific approaches, able to offer to the communities in which they are embedded a space for open, inclusive and inquiry-based learning on science issues which have an impact on citizens' lives. This will be achieved by establishing multiplayers' partnerships (Open Science Communities, OSCs) involving schools, families, civil society organisations, informal education providers, policy-makers, the media and a vast range of science institutions in six EU countries, very different in terms of geographical and economic situation. OSCs will jointly select socio-scientific issues to be tackled and develop real-life projects to be implemented in schools involving more than 1500 students of all educational levels across six EU countries. Students will interact with a broad spectrum of science professionals and be involved in data collection and decision-making processes. Via open community events, they will then share and rethink their findings and experiences, liaising with families and society, acting as science multipliers. To ensure the results' transferability and uptake, final recommendations, guidelines, and learning materials will be published in an multilingual open webspace; OSCs will be maintained and enlarged after the end of the project to further pursue the MULTIPLIERS open schooling process.

HERCCULES aims at defining a first-of-a-kind, integrated and replicable approach for the implementation of the whole CCUS chain to two strategic sectors of the circular economy - Cement and Energy-from-Waste (EfW) – in an area – Italy and Greece – where the industrial promise of CCUS is largely unexplored. Leveraging on the potential of two clusters of emitters in Northern Italy (cement + EfW) and Greece (cement), HERCCULES will pave the way towards the implementation of the first full-scale CCUS chain in Southern Europe. Technological, infrastructural, safety, societal, regulatory and financial issues will be addressed by a multidisciplinary approach to build an “HERCCULES paradigm” comprising nine basic chapters. 1) TRL7-8 demonstration of 2 flexible and retrofittable CO2 capture technologies, to be tested in 2 large-scale cement plants + 1 EfW plant with residual waste/biomass feed to approach nearly zero or negative emissions (>9000 h of tests). 2) Design of the optimal CO2 transport network for utilization and storage under different infrastructural evolution scenarios. 3) TRL8 Geological storage of captured CO2 in the two most advanced CO2 sites in Southern Europe (Prinos and Ravenna). 4) Demonstration in industrial environment of novel CO2 mineralization solutions and re-use technologies for the production of a breakthrough hydraulic binder enabling the industrial production of a carbon-sink concrete (>1000 h of tests). 5) Experimentally-supported, Techno-Economic Analyses with risk assessment to ensure the safety of the full CCUS chain. 6) Advancement of societal readiness through a participative approach. 7) Identification of business models and financial mechanisms tailored to CCUS. 8) TRL8-9 pre-FEED studies on the most promising HERCCULES implementation options. 9) Ad-hoc case studies to verify the replicability of the HERCCULES paradigm. Know-how, data and models will converge into a dedicated exploitation plan to seed CCUS across Europe.

FLAMIN-GO aims at developing an Organ-on-Chip technology for clinical trials on Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). In RA, a number of unmet needs still persist particularly related to response/non-response of powerful but expensive drugs. Conventional clinical trials may address part of these challenges, but are time consuming, expensive and ethically ethically doubtful as part of the patients still fail to achieve disease benefits. Thus, the rheumatology community has a need for an alternative strategy that can deliver innovative trials. FLAMIN-GO develops a personalized next-generation synovia-on-chip, that, by effectively mimicking the complexity of RA joint, will allow performing personalized clinical trials-on-chip. The solution will be based on design and fabrication of a multi-compartment microfluidic platform, for 3D culturing and perfusion of all the disease-relevant joint tissues. It focuses on synovia and synovial fluid, which are the pathogenetic targeted tissues, but including immune system, who sustain the disease, and cartilage and bone which are the end damaged tissues, leading to permanent disability. Starting from individual patient biopsies, this model seeks to replicate RA joints, thus allowing to test and allocate the best on-market drug for that patient in 1-2 months starting form biopsy. When validated, the platform will also be a turning point for i) pharma by enabling screening of new drugs reducing costs, time, and animal testing and for ii) translational research for identification of new biomarkers or therapeutic targets. FLAMIN-GO consortium features a strong, well-balanced composition of hospital, academia and industry partners, who cover with complementary expertise the whole value chain. It gathers experts in the fields of rheumatology, material science, tissue engineering, nanotechnology, cell biology and 3D modelling, in a cohesive, transdisciplinary, multi-sectorial approach taking on the challenge to drive RA personalized care.