It’s called Nodes and it’s the innovation ecosystem for the Northwest chaired by the rector of the Turin Polytechnic Guido Saracco. It is one of the 11 poles wanted by the Pnrr to stimulate applied research in the industrial field, technology transfer and innovation in the entrepreneurial field throughout Italy. The project is coordinated by the local universities – Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta and the western provinces of Lombardy, Como, Varese and Pavia – alongside 24 public and private research centers and innovation poles, with an endowment equal to 110 million euros for the next three years.
The tenders for local companies are ready – on the website https://www.ecs-nodes.eu/ – and the opening is expected between the second half of April and the month of May. 49% of the available funds will be assigned to companies, SMEs or start-ups, through cascading tenders, a share of 15 million will instead be reserved for companies in the South while a part of the resources will be used to assign vouchers to companies to acquire services at added value aimed at accelerating the industrial development of prototypes or concepts.
Six lines of specialization, Industry 4.0 for sustainable mobility and aerospace, Industrial sustainability and green technologies, Tourism and culture industry, Digital and sustainable mountains, Health industry and silver economy, Primary and secondary agro-industry. In total, 35.5 million euros are on the table for companies for the first two cascading tenders in support of research and innovation activities: 25.3 million will go to research and development projects, presented by companies, also in collaboration between They; 10.2 million will be allocated to facilitate access by start-ups and SMEs to support services to promote strategic investments in product, service or process innovation activities and to accelerate the development of innovative companies.
Chiara Ferroni, general manager of Nodes, then introduced two other types of funds that involve the system of 400 researchers involved: 5.8 million will be reserved for “Proof of Concept” (PoC) projects proposed by researchers who want to approach the market collaborating with companies or creating new entrepreneurial realities; more than 2 million will instead be used to train new talents through the research doctorate in an «industrial» perspective, these are courses designed jointly with companies to encourage the entry of researchers into the productive world.