Preliminary Kick-off Meeting of the SymbioTech Project

The SymbioTech project—The European Alliance for Advancing Circular Economy via Digital Industrial Symbiosis—formally commenced its operations with a pre-kick-off online meeting on 29 November 2024. This Erasmus+ funded initiative is set to significantly accelerate Europe’s transition towards a digital circular economy by focusing on upskilling the workforce in industrial symbiosis practices powered by advanced technologies.

A Pan-European Alliance for Resource Optimization

SymbioTech unites 11 organizations spanning Poland, Italy, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. The consortium is strategically diverse, combining the expertise of universities, vocational training (VET) providers, SMEs, business support organizations, and public bodies. The AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow hosted the pre-kick-off, which focused on establishing the foundational administrative and financial frameworks for technical execution.

The Digital Industrial Symbiosis Paradigm

The core mission of SymbioTech is to support the shift to a sustainable Circular Economy by developing a skilled workforce proficient in leveraging deep tech solutions like AI, Machine Learning, and Blockchain to optimize resource flows between organizations—the essence of industrial symbiosis. This involves turning one company's waste or by-product into a valuable input for another.

The project is designed to deliver key results that establish a new educational and professional framework for this evolving field:

• Establishing a New Labour Market Framework: Defining the competencies for the SymbioTech Manager—a crucial professional profile tasked with leading future inter-organizational resource optimization projects.
• Developing Targeted Curricula: Creating specialized learning pathways at EQF Level 5 (VET) and Level 6 (Higher Education). These curricula will immerse students in advanced topics vital for digital industrial symbiosis, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Blockchain technologies for resource tracking, and symbiotic energy management strategies.
• Capacity Building: Enhancing the pedagogical and technical expertise of educators and trainers across the consortium to effectively deliver this new, specialized content.

By targeting both the professional role and the educational content, SymbioTech aims to create the next generation of professionals capable of implementing digital industrial symbiosis solutions across European industries