About - Excellend
EXCELLEND is a Horizon Europe project under the call topic HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-TALENTS-01-01 – ERA Chairs. It officially started on the 1st of February 2025 with a 5-year duration and it aims to create a unique Centre of Excellence at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (NCSRD) in Greece. The primary focus is on sustainable energy solutions towards net-zero fossil fuels and climate neutrality by 2050, bringing together all the scattered energy-related activities of different laboratories of NCSRD.
Project coordinator
The project coordinator is Dr. George Kosmadakis, a senior researcher with extensive research and innovation capacity on several of the project topics. He belongs to the Solar & other energy systems laboratory of INRASTES.
George Kosmadakis
Project Coordinator
Objectives
To reach the main mission for upgrading the research capacity of NCSRD, six main objectives have been identified:
- Create a Centre of Excellence focused on sustainable energy solutions to host the ERA Chair and build up its research Team led by Prof. George Tsatsaronis
- Perform changes to NCSRD structures and processes to upgrade the research capacity related to the formation of collaborative structures and the transformation of the Innovation Office to a hub for new services
- Enhance the research excellence of the Team members through training and collaborative work with national and international organizations, educational actions and create synergies with various stakeholders
- Perform three research activities as a follow-up of the previous objective to expand the research priorities and build-up the Intellectual Property and research results
- Ensure the sustainability of the project by attracting new funds via projects and services provision, exploiting the project outcomes and deepening the ERA
- Enhance knowledge transfer, collaborations and outreach through a large variety of dissemination and communication actions promoting open science, and exploit the key results of the project
Work Plan
To effectively address all challenges and objectives, the 5-year project is structured under five actions:
Action 1
The creation of the Centre of Excellence, finalized early in the project
Action 2
Structural changes and their early monitoring
Action 3
Enhancing the research excellence
Action 4
Performing research tasks
Action 5
Activities to ensure the sustainable viability of the Centre of Excellence
Vision
Our vision is to become one of the top groups for sustainable energy research in the EU, while strengthening and deepening the ERA and guide other Greek research actors to improve the local research Ecosystem, with exploitable results and high growth to enlarge our team.
