TAMK joins new university alliance – Uninovis strengthens European data expertise

Uninovis will enable TAMK students, staff and stakeholders to share knowledge and develop innovations across disciplines and national borders. Uninovis will significantly increase European cooperation in education and research. Mobility of all kinds will be more strongly supported.  

Representatives of the Uninovis Alliance met in Paris on 22–24 January 2025 to discuss future actions and opportunities for cooperation. The international group of participants, gathered at the Université Paris Sorbonne Nord campus, worked intensively over three days to familiarise themselves with the Uninovis strategy, objectives and roadmap. The programme also included thematic roundtables where experts from the partner universities worked together to review the actions for the coming year.      

Uninovis is not just a four-year EU-funded project. Rather it is a longer-term strategic alliance of cooperation aimed not only at reforming higher education in the spirit of European values, but also at strengthening the role of culture and science more broadly. This includes developing data literacy and learning practices, creating new types of international research networks, and integrating green transition and sustainability thinking into teaching.    

Uninovis will provide common educational offerings that better integrate the understanding, use, protection and analysis of data in the development of lifelong competences.    

 – In the first phase, we will carry out a survey of suitable micro-courses available in all higher education institutions, which students could already start taking across country borders," says Kaisa Kokko, lecturer in entrepreneurship and responsible for work package 2 at TAMK's Business and Media Unit.   

TAMK driving the green and digital transition   

The Alliance has a total of five different working groups, each focusing on a different theme. TAMK has representatives in each working group, from lifelong learning to innovation, research and communication. Cooperation between the multinational and multidisciplinary teams has been close and fruitful, and joint projects are already in the pipeline. The Uninovis Alliance offers an excellent opportunity to increase the number of co-funded projects, which is also the wish of the European Commission. This is how Nina Smolander, Lecturer in Nursing at TAMK, describes the activities:  

 – My own area of responsibility focuses on the integration of innovation ecosystems in education, collaborative research and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Each partner university in the alliance will set up an Excellence Hub to stimulate student and staff mobility and collaboration between research teams, both between universities and the private sector. The Excellence Hubs will make the design and implementation of joint projects of higher quality and more flexible.   

TAMK is the coordinator in charge of the green and digital transition component of Uninovis. The aim is to prepare staff and students from partner universities to meet the various demands of sustainable development and to act as pioneers and change agents in the green and digital transition. According to Pauliina Mansikkamäki, Head of Competences, who leads the working group, there is a strong commitment from all partner universities to develop and share competences for this twin transition.   

In addition to the working groups responsible for the various work packages, the alliance also forms a close-knit network of researchers, which Arja Halkoaho, Senior Lecturer at TAMK, believes is worth making use of.   

 – In Paris, there was an intense discussion about new research openings, with each partner university presenting its own research strengths. Based on these, we already have a few interesting openings for new research funding calls coming up this spring," says Halkoaho.    

After the first four-year funding period, the Uninovis Alliance will apply for further funding and continue to develop and expand. So, this is just the beginning of a new kind of European higher education, where learning and research are increasingly linked to technology and societal needs.