CESAER

CESAER (Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research) is an international network of leading universities with a strong scientific and technological profile. Its members promote excellence in higher education, training, research and innovation, contribute to knowledge societies for a sustainable future and have a significant scientific, economic, social and societal impact.

CESAER Objectives

• to defend members' interests by assisting policy makers and funders in shaping European strategies, policies and programmes for research, education, innovation and university leadership;
• To learn from each other by sharing and disseminating intelligence, knowledge and best practices in research, education, innovation and university management;
• to protect sustainable funding by promoting and shaping sustainable competitive and non-competitive funding streams to members from different sources at different levels;
• to lead the debate on key issues by promoting reflection and understanding of the roles of science and technology in knowledge-based societies for a sustainable future;
• to expand members' strengths and networks to support members in demonstrating their excellence and difference in Europe and beyond.

Working groups

Working groups are essential in identifying challenges and pressures on member universities, involving members in setting priorities and implementing network activities. The following working groups currently exist:

• Benchmark
• Human resources
• Innovation
• Teaching and learning
• Openness of science and technology
• Sustainability
• Sustainable financing

Benchmark

• Optimizes the display of performance in important rankings and rating systems and shares experience and data from metrics and ratings. It considers how society, politics, funding agencies and stakeholders perceive universities (at least through rankings), as well as how universities would like to be perceived – and works on recommendations on what data could be used to influence and shape these images.

Human Resources

• The Human Resources working group deals with the topic of digital transformation in HR, including the support of digital HR skills. Another topic is the support of diverse and modern academic career.

Innovation

• This working group covers innovation as part of the mission of the members and is concerned with supporting the development of sustainable (regional) innovation ecosystems in and around universities of science and technology. It explores an evolving model of engagement of PhD students in technical universities with industry and other societal partners to ensure societal engagement of innovation efforts and talent and foster disruptive innovation.

Teaching and learning

• Leads the defence of European education policies, supports member universities in realizing their educational mission and inspires members to new forms of teaching and learning, lifelong learning and STEAM education (Science - Technology Engineering, Mathematics - Arts), which emphasizes the combination of science, technology and art.

Openness of science and technology

• This working group addresses the field of open science, safety and security of knowledge and the field of citizen science. For open science, emphasis is placed on research data management (RDM), the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the development of findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data and the promotion of open access. In the framework of safety and security of knowledge, there is a need to prevent improper measures that would limit scientific integrity, academic freedom and institutional autonomy (including the freedom of universities to choose their partners) and limit the competitiveness and scientific excellence of members. The Citizen Science Working Group explores effective two-way engagement between members and society as a whole to create a shared understanding of the role of key technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence and quantum technologies).

Sustainability

• The Sustainability Working Group focuses on goals related to a sustainable future. Specifically, it inspires members and other technical universities about the contribution of sustainability to knowledge societies for a sustainable future, advocates appropriate framework conditions for optimizing the contribution of technical universities to policy makers and funders. It promotes a culture of mutual learning and the promotion of best practices that contribute to a sustainable future.

Sustainable financing

• This working group addresses the topic of sustainable funding and its critical importance for achieving long-term impact and for ensuring a balance between challenge-focused and researcher-led frontier research. It advocates the formation of European policies and strategies in the field of research, education and innovation (especially towards the EU institutions) and contributes to the implementation of the ERA and the EEA. It focuses on EU funding programs in research, education and innovation, such as Horizon Europe, Erasmus, European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF).