By David Graff, ENGINEERING. Translated by LeeAnn Iovanni, AAU Communication

Aalborg University (AAU) is a mission-oriented university with a strong, strategic focus on sustainability and collaboration with the business community. It therefore makes perfect sense that AAU is taking part in all the innomissions that will turbocharge the green transition by bringing together research environments and the business community around joint missions that are of political interest.

- The innomissions speak to the overall transformation of our society, and we are extremely pleased to help Denmark move closer to the goal of climate neutrality by 2050, while paving the way for new Danish business ventures in recycling plastics and textiles, green fuels, carbon capture and so on. It's like something right out of our mission statement at AAU, says John K. Pedersen, Pro-dean for Research at the Faculty of Engineering and Science.

Interdisciplinarity at the centre

AAU already had an interdisciplinary approach when the innomissions were warming up in the spring of 2021: Researchers came together across disciplines to devise project ideas. This approach was the right one, says Søren Kristiansen, Pro-dean for Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities:

- Interdisciplinary collaboration ensures that the necessary technological innovations are developed and implemented based on knowledge of people and society. For example, knowledge about policy development, socioeconomics or insight into the everyday life of the population may be prerequisites for green solutions to actually come to fruition, he believes.

The Department of Communication and Psychology, for example, is involved in the innomission MissionGreenFuels providing knowledge on citizen involvement processes that can create the necessary support for establishing wind turbines, biogas plants and other green initiatives.

A practice course for mission thinking

According to John K. Pedersen, the interdisciplinary collaboration leads to already strong research environments being consolidated and expanded. This provides a good starting point for a future where the mission-oriented approach is only expected to increase.

- Collaboration on the innomissions has further strengthened our environments, created more harmony between the university's disciplines and at the same time served as good practice for how to set up an effective partnership on missions, he says.

This notion resonates with Louise Møller Haase, Pro-dean for Education at the Technical Faculty of IT and Design who is also head of the CircularTEX project which is part of the Partnership for Circular Economy for Plastics and Textiles. She sees great potential in this way of working:

- We’ve done business collaboration and academic collaboration before, but the unifying link to a mission is newer. When we collaborate in a mission-oriented way, we increase the chances of creating real impact. The approach requires that we have a clear and nuanced stakeholder perspective, and this ultimately helps us, for example, to deliver business models or technologies that can be implemented directly in practice, she explains.

Benefit to Danes

However, companies are not the only ones who can benefit from the innomissions; their mission-oriented green research and innovation partnerships will create impact at the societal level in terms of climate neutrality by 2050.

- Danes will also encounter offshoots of the innomissions such as green fuels for cars, green food in the supermarket and hopefully also a stronger circular economy with products that are designed with higher durability and that consider recycling right from the start, John K. Pedersen points out.

So far, only about half of the DKK 700 million for the innomissions has been used, and in the near future, researchers across AAU's faculties will gather again to write applications for the remaining half to be used in the spring of 2023. Thus, the stage is set for cooperation:

- We’re prepared and ready to enter into collaboration with relevant actors from the Danish research and development sector and the business community, says Søren Kristiansen, who believes that AAU should use the experience from the first round:

- Interdisciplinary collaboration at AAU is developing, and there is great interest in reaching out to each other. We need to take advantage of that now, he concludes.