The Universitat Jaume I in Castelló will develop six research and innovation projects in areas such as environmental sustainability and risk detection to improve disaster response through funding obtained in the competitive call for proposals from the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI) (IVACE+e innovación) 2025, which seeks to promote innovation, R&D transfer and collaboration between universities, technology centres and companies.
The UJI has obtained funding in three lines of the call financed by the European Union within the framework of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Programme for the Valencian Community 2021-2027 – IVACE+ for an amount of nearly one million euros, with which it will promote six projects with direct technological and social impact to respond to real challenges.
The various initiatives led by UJI research staff will provide innovative solutions in the field of environmental sustainability through advanced technologies to improve water quality and management, strengthen the circular carbon economy, promote cleaner and safer production systems aligned with green technology, and strengthen the innovation ecosystem through materials with a lower environmental impact. They also seek to anticipate responses to situations of risk due to natural disasters resulting from climate change.
Four of the initiatives are part of the Strategic Cooperation Projects programme, with joint funding of €608,963. These include SIDENCA, a project led by researcher Pablo Juan Verdoy that seeks to create an intelligent risk detection and decision-making support system for disasters. The other three actions within this line of funding focus on environmental sustainability. GREEN-METH, coordinated by Sixto Giménez, focuses on the recovery of CO₂ and its conversion into renewable methane using disruptive technologies.
On the other hand, DESHCEM, led by Elena Pitarch, will design a catalytic hybrid system to eliminate emerging micro-pollutants in the water cycle, and along the same lines, AQUA+, led by Lucía Reig, aims to recover waste from the entire water cycle and transform it into sustainable materials with low environmental impact.
Within the line of Valorisation and Transfer of Research Results to Companies, and also with environmental sustainability as its focus, is the project by researcher Gladys Mínguez to develop green technology for the synthesis of nanomaterials using a demonstrator based on laser ablation in fluids, with a budget of €246,725.
The sixth project, within the Talent Promotion programme, is led by Luis Cabedo, in which the new innovation agent, Pau Ródenas, will promote the creation of an open innovation hub to strengthen knowledge transfer and university-business collaboration in the field of sustainable and advanced polymers. It has funding of €126,866.
The rector of the UJI, Eva Alcón, highlighted that the results obtained within the framework of this AVI call "demonstrate how the knowledge and innovation generated at the university translate into solutions to problems that concern us as a society, such as environmental sustainability or anticipation of risk situations". Alcón praised "the ability, talent and commitment of the UJI's research staff", as well as "the institutional effort to continue strengthening research activity and its transfer to the social and productive fabric".
The Vice-Rector for Innovation, Transfer and Scientific Dissemination at the Universitat Jaume I, David Cabedo, stressed that the €982,555.29 in funds raised through these three lines of competitive funding from the AVI represent 11.9% of the resources obtained by Valencian public universities, "a figure that reaffirms our position in the regional innovation ecosystem".