Thirty-five provinces involved and over 153 candidate research projects, for a total of 26.5 million euros. The seven “Cascade Calls” of the “Aldo Moro di Bari” University closed with excellent results, applications for which were open until May 9th.
The measures, financed as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, saw the participation of 153 entities including businesses, universities and research bodies, for a total of funding requests of 26.5 million euros, well over the 17 million originally made available. The areas of intervention range from agri-food safety to the valorisation of landscape heritage, through the development of seismic risk prevention and management models, artificial intelligence systems in man-machine symbiosis, prediction of landslides and fires with HPC supercomputers, agro- ecological.
«There is a Pnrr that works – declares the Rector of the “Aldo Moro” University of Bari, Stefano Bronzini – It happens above all if a synergy can be created between the academic world and the business system. This is why in the seven Cascata Calls we intended to operate in partnership with Unioncamere Puglia, which worked on communication and on a technological platform close to the language of businesses. The investigation of the projects will give timely results, but we can assume right now that we will exhaust the funds at our disposal.”
«Almost all of the companies that presented an application – explains the President of Unioncamere Puglia, Luciana di Bisceglie – are represented by small and medium-sized enterprises. A good news. It means that our business system does not shy away from the challenges of technological innovation, despite the company size. We also register applications from 12 different universities and 35 different Italian provinces: a strong signal of the attractiveness and pervasiveness of these calls throughout the country, especially in the centre-south”.
The three provinces most present for nominations are Bari, Foggia and Benevento. Palermo, Naples and Pescara also performed well. The projects financed by the Uniba Cascading Calls embrace all phases of research: basic, applied, experimental development and feasibility studies. The topics range from agri-food technologies to ecology and landscape protection, from sustainable mobility to artificial intelligence. There is no shortage of very challenging topics such as man-machine symbiosis and prediction of landslides, fires and earthquakes.
Like the Agritech tender which served to finance the study of an eco-hydraulic system that is sustainable in environmental and energy terms which, through the introduction of advanced techniques for the collection and purification of marine or brackish water, provides solutions suitable for irrigation in marginal coastal areas and the use of the resulting brine in other production processes, or the application of IoT solutions for the collection and analysis of water, agronomic and environmental, economic and social data, to improve the management of natural resources and reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production in marginal areas.
