Bringing Industry to the Classroom: Expert Conferences Connecting Students with Digital Twin Innovation
Best practices Bringing Industry to the Classroom: Expert Conferences Connecting Students with Digital Twin Innovation Users: SMEs, Training providers (public), Training providers (private), Industry | Theme: Indsustry Engagement | Action: Education programmes/courses | Beneficiaries: SMEs | Labour force (employed) DIGITWIN4CIUEDIGITWIN4CIUE Beatriz Martin Bautista Cerro DIGITWIN4CIUE, through the European Center of Excellence in Digitalization of Infrastructures and Cities, offers an Executive Master’s in Digital Twins for Infrastructures and Cities. This program features a flexible academic structure, attracting professionals from various disciplines in the built environment industry.Designed for professionals and engineers passionate about digital transformation in civil engineering, smart cities, and related fields, our program provides comprehensive training in key digital technologies for digital twins in infrastructures. It equips participants with the ability to conceive and develop digital twins to tackle specific challenges in infrastructure planning, design, construction, operation, and management, while also fostering the skills needed to identify business opportunities arising from digital twin technology.The Joint Institutional Executive Master diploma is issued by three of Europe’s top engineering universities: UPM (Spain), ENPC (France), BME (Hungary) and ITU (Turkey). The challenge? How can we ensure that students not only learn about Digital Twins in class but also engage with cutting-edge innovation, industry advancements, and real-world applications?Creating direct connections between students, researchers, and professionals is key to fostering career opportunities, expanding networks, and shaping a future-ready workforce. Our solution To bridge this gap, we established a structured series of expert-led conferences throughout the academic year. These sessions take place every two weeks in both online and in-person formats and are hosted across the five partner universities delivering the master’s program.Through this initiative, students benefit from continuous exposure to industry leaders, researchers, and professionals, allowing them to:• Engage directly with key players in the field• Gain insights into the latest advancements in Digital Twin technology• Participate in discussions that link academic learning with real industry needs Outcomes This initiative fosters a growth-focused learning environment, where students exchange knowledge beyond exams and assessments—driven by curiosity and professional development.Additionally, the in-person conferences enhance networking opportunities, giving students the chance to interact first-hand with guest speakers during dedicated networking sessions. These moments are crucial for establishing connections, exploring career paths, and sparking future collaborations in the rapidly evolving Digital Twin ecosystem. Key takeaways ‘Structured & Recurring Industry Engagement: Organizing expert-led conferences every two weeks ensures continuous exposure to industry leaders and real-world applications, keeping students engaged with cutting-edge advancements.Bridging Academia & Industry: Direct interaction with industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers aligns academic learning with market needs, enhancing career readiness and professional development.Networking & Career Development: Dedicated networking sessions provide students with valuable opportunities to connect with professionals, explore career paths, and foster collaborations in the Digital Twin ecosystem. Learn more here
Codesign for Cutting-Edge Digital Skills – The ACHIEVE Model
Best practices Codesign for Cutting-Edge Digital Skills – The ACHIEVE Model Users: Training Providers (Public), Training Providers (Private) | Theme: Industry Engagement | Action: Education Programmes/Courses | Beneficiaries: Training Providers (Public), Training Providers (Private), Industry, SMEs, Learners (STEM background), Labour force (employed) Achieve Achieve Andrea Biancini, Salvatore Moccia A large share of European companies and particularly SMEs report significant difficulty in finding and hiring quality candidates with a sufficient level of advanced digital skills. This problem reflects not only the general lack of ICT graduates and professionals in Europe, but also a mismatch of skills demand and supply, even among professionals with ICT-related backgrounds. Oftentimes, the available academic curricula do not effectively prepare learners for the workforce or equip them with the advanced digital skills required by the industry.The ACHIEVE project serves as a best practice example of how collaborative codesign between academia and industry can revolutionize digital education. By integrating real-world market needs into the curriculum development process, ACHIEVE ensures that learners gain job-ready skills while companies benefit from a highly skilled workforce. The challenge? The rapid evolution of cloud computing, networking infrastructure, and HPC has outpaced the ability of higher education institutions to update curricula, creating a skills gap between graduates and industry needs.Universities tend to emphasise theoretical learning while industry needs practical, hands-on skills. Oftentimes, there is also limited interaction between universities and industry, which leads to curricula missing out on what skills are truly in demand, leaving graduates less prepared for the workplace. Our solution ACHIEVE pioneers a transformative approach to developing next-generation cloud and networking infrastructure education by shifting from a traditional design model to a co-design methodology. By engaging leading academic institutions, industrial partners, and research centers from the outset, the project ensures that its educational programs align with the real-world demands of industry and research. A central pillar of ACHIEVE is its deep integration of academic excellence with industrial expertise. The program establishes strong ties with HPC providers, cloud infrastructure companies, telecom firms, and research institutions, ensuring that students gain both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. The curriculum incorporates real-world case studies, industry-led challenges, and applied research projects, enabling students to develop competencies that are immediately applicable in high-demand job markets. Outcomes: Industry-Aligned Education: The curriculum was designed in collaboration with leading cloud providers, telecom companies, and HPC research centers, ensuring graduates acquire in-demand technical skills in AI-driven networking, cloud security, and HPC architectures. Faster Curriculum Adaptation: By engaging industry experts early, the program streamlined the approval process across different national accreditation frameworks, reducing delays and aligning with market needs more effectively. Stronger Industry Participation: Over 30 SMEs and enterprises actively contributed through guest lectures, mentorship, and internship placements, enhancing hands-on training and employability. Increased Student Engagement: The program attracted 250+ students across multiple EU countries, with 85% securing industry placements or research roles within six months of completion. Scalable Certification Model: Introduced stackable micro-credentials in cloud security, AI-driven networking, and HPC optimization, allowing professionals to upskill flexibly while maintaining workforce engagement. Key takeaways Co-design education programs with industry to ensure graduates have the right skills for the job market. Collaborate with companies and SMEs to incorporate and offer internships and real-world projects as part of the curriculum, improving students’ employability. Consider providing modular learning paths and micro-credentials: their flexibility allows for alignment with industry needs and makes upskilling more accessible. Leverage your consortium’s industry connections across countries: cross-border collaboration strengthens knowledge exchange and scalability. Learn more here Case Summary– Context: Fit4internet is a non-profit initiative aimed at enhancing digital literacy across Austria. By using the Digital Competence Framework (DigComp AT), which identifies key components of digital competencies and aligns with European standards, Fit4internet helps individuals showcase their digital skills. The Fit4internet platform offers a way to track and prove digital competencies, helping with employability and ensuring that the Austrian workforce has the necessary ICT skills to meet market demands. Through the digital skills profile platform, the initiative supports both individual growth and the development of a digitally capable society. Challenge: The challenge faced is managing proof of competencies acquired through various learning methods, including formal education, non-formal training, and informal certifications, which can lead to inconsistent records. Securing sustainable funding to support the continuous development of new digital competencies, ensuring that programs remain up-to-date with evolving market needs. The second main challenge was fostering broad participation and engagement, especially among groups who may lack access to digital tools or education. Identified Approach / Solution: The Fit4internet platform provides a centralised, user-friendly system to manage and showcase digital competencies, aligning with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). Through this platform, individuals can track and showcase their digital skills, making it easier for employers, educators, and organisations to assess their talent. The platform allows users to create an e-portfolio that showcases their digital skills, with the option to share it through a link or as a PDF. This portfolio highlights the digital competencies that a user has acquired, linked to their certificates. These certificates can be formal, non-formal, or informal. The platform also supports the generation of a digital skills profile that showcases the user’s acquired skills. Users earn digital badges as a visual representation of their skills. This allows them to continue with their learning journey, while showing off their competencies to others. Outcomes: Key takeaways: Fit4internet engage multiple stakeholders from academia, industry, and policy to develop holistic and relevant digital competency frameworks. They also use widely applied frameworks to measure skills gaps, enabling better planning for individuals and institutions. By doing this they improve reinsertion rates into the labor force by addressing individuals digital skill gaps and aligning them with market needs. This benefits companies by providing clear insights into the skillsets that are being developed and that are available in the workforce.
Leveraging flexible approaches and platforms for SME engagement in master’s programme design
Best practices Leveraging flexible approaches and platforms for SME engagement in master’s programme design Users: Training Providers (Public) | Theme: Industry Engagement | Action: Education Programmes/Courses | Beneficiaries: Training Providers (Public), Industry, SMEs DIGITWIN4CIEU digitwin4ciue.eu Ignacio González Tejada – Center of Excellence Director, UPM Rocío López Espinosa – Project Coordinator, UPM Beatriz Martín Bautista-Cerro – Project Manager, UPM DIGITWIN4CIEU offers a master’s degree across Spain, France, Hungary, and Turkey, equiping civil engineers with digital skill’s for the industry’s transformation. The quality and relevance of the content is largely ensured due to the industry and academic experts from SMEs and universities that have collaborated in the development of this masters. The challenge? Convincing SMEs in manufacturing to embrace the virtualization of infrastructures proves challenging, as they are already struggling to adapt to industry-specific requirements such as developing Building Information Modelings (BIM). Additionally, SMEs are hesitant to invest in sponsoring students and face limited availability of employees to participate in the preparation stages of the Master’s programme due to professional projects and deadlines that they must adhere to. Our solution DIGITWIN4CIUE offers an Executive Master’s in Digital Twins for Infrastructures and Cities, featuring an academic programme designed with flexibility. To attract professionals from different disciplines in the built environment industry, flexible scheduling options such as evening or recorded classes have been implemented. DIGITWIN4CIUE is developing tailor-made training, including long-term courses and MOOC programs, with specialized content designed to meet industry needs. This continuous generation of technical content aims to shape the mindset of SME managers and highlight the importance of adapting to technological advancements. DIGITWIN4CIUE has established a European Centre of Excellence, which serves as the primary platform for engaging with SMEs. It acts as a hub for innovative research, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing, bringing together experts from academia, industry, and government. Key takeaways A network of contacts to generate impact: Create a technical contents team, that will generate weekly communications of interest to persuade SMEs managers on the need to anticipate the future of the construction sector, in order to be competitive with larger entities. Regular publications on social media: Publish posts on a mix of channels, including LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube etc. to keep stakeholders engaged in the goal of the project. Sign collaboration agreements with SME associations (e.g. ANCI, Tecniberia) to mobilise participation in programme development and deployment. Learn more here Case Summary– Context: Fit4internet is a non-profit initiative aimed at enhancing digital literacy across Austria. By using the Digital Competence Framework (DigComp AT), which identifies key components of digital competencies and aligns with European standards, Fit4internet helps individuals showcase their digital skills. The Fit4internet platform offers a way to track and prove digital competencies, helping with employability and ensuring that the Austrian workforce has the necessary ICT skills to meet market demands. Through the digital skills profile platform, the initiative supports both individual growth and the development of a digitally capable society. Challenge: The challenge faced is managing proof of competencies acquired through various learning methods, including formal education, non-formal training, and informal certifications, which can lead to inconsistent records. Securing sustainable funding to support the continuous development of new digital competencies, ensuring that programs remain up-to-date with evolving market needs. The second main challenge was fostering broad participation and engagement, especially among groups who may lack access to digital tools or education. Identified Approach / Solution: The Fit4internet platform provides a centralised, user-friendly system to manage and showcase digital competencies, aligning with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). Through this platform, individuals can track and showcase their digital skills, making it easier for employers, educators, and organisations to assess their talent. The platform allows users to create an e-portfolio that showcases their digital skills, with the option to share it through a link or as a PDF. This portfolio highlights the digital competencies that a user has acquired, linked to their certificates. These certificates can be formal, non-formal, or informal. The platform also supports the generation of a digital skills profile that showcases the user’s acquired skills. Users earn digital badges as a visual representation of their skills. This allows them to continue with their learning journey, while showing off their competencies to others. Outcomes: Key takeaways: Fit4internet engage multiple stakeholders from academia, industry, and policy to develop holistic and relevant digital competency frameworks. They also use widely applied frameworks to measure skills gaps, enabling better planning for individuals and institutions. By doing this they improve reinsertion rates into the labor force by addressing individuals digital skill gaps and aligning them with market needs. This benefits companies by providing clear insights into the skillsets that are being developed and that are available in the workforce.