Central European Platform for Plasma-enabled Surface Engineering begins
The newly established Centre for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (CENAM) in FMPI CU will collaborate on the COLOSSE project, which is being funded for the next three years by Horizon Europe through the Pathways to Synergies Call 2023, starting in April 2024. In the field of plasma-supported surface engineering, COLOSSE brings together Czech (MU Brno, WBU Pilsen) and Slovak (CU Bratislava) research institutions, increasing their potential for Horizon Europe and future EU research and innovation programmes.
Main investigating organization: Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic
Cooperating organizations: Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia; West Bohemia University Pilsen, Czech Republic
Principal Investigator from FMPI CU: doc. Ing. Marián Mikula, PhD.
Investigators from FMPI CU: Research Staff CENAM, Mgr. Ján Čatloš - project manager
Project funding: HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-04
Grant agreement number: Project: 101158464 — COLOSSE
Project duration Grant: 4/2024-3/2027
CENAM Centre embarks on a new project. Assoc. Prof. Marián Mikula and his team are one of the coordinators of the new project named Central European Platform for Plasma-enabled Surface Engineering (COLOSSE), which connects three Czech and Slovak research institutes.
The goal of COLOSSE is to increase the participation of Czech and Slovak plasma-enabled surface engineering R&I centres in Horizon Europe and future EU Framework Programmes for R&I. The project connects three institutions: Masaryk University in Brno, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, and Comenius University in Bratislava. The three research centres at COLOSSE have been supported by major ERDF investment in the past decade. Their mission is to perform cutting-edge science that has the potential to enable the development of novel technologies. They have been shaping and supporting their regional ecosystems for over a decade, creating networks of interactions that facilitate knowledge transfer and the exploitation of surface engineering technologies. They have also developed international connections, which, however, have led only to isolated cases of involvement in international R&I projects.
These three centres have joined together to promote their publicity and visibility on the European R&D field map. Together, they will extend good research practices by recruiting new post-doc staff from abroad and presenting their research activities at European R&D centres, conferences, and trade fairs. They also plan to organize hard- and soft-skills training, as well as two PhD retreat conferences with international overlap for their early-stage researchers and doctoral students.
The MU Faculty of Science's dean's office hosted COLOSSE's kick-off meeting on April 4 and 5, 2024. The research centres and the project office held an introductory meeting where they discussed the practical aspects of the project. Now, the COLOSSE leaders, researchers, and research managers are eager to finalize project strategies that will allow them to embark on the project's internationalization and upskilling trajectory.