On Thursday, February 24, at the Western University of Timișoara, a new plenary meeting of "Strategic Partners Group – GPS UVT”, independent advisory structure through which UVT adapts and promotes its public role, especially as a trainer in education and as a center for strategic thinking in the community. As a result of the decision that GPS UVT took last year, to expand the composition of the structure by inviting representatives of the local administration, the representatives of the Timișoara City Hall (Mr. Dominic Fritz) and the County Council also participated as guests in this meeting Timiș (Mr. Alin Nica), who were with the UVT community, represented by the rector of UVT, prof. Dr. Marilen Gabriel Pirtea, and by the representatives of the GPS UVT partners.
The agenda of the debates included two important themes for the future of Timișoara, which confirmed once again the catalytic role that the West University of Timișoara plays in the grouping of community ideas and resources, in the relationship with the administration and the business environment, for structuring a strategy viable for the development of Timișoara and the Western region.
In the case of the first theme, the starting point of the dialogue was the establishment of the new "UVT Living Lab" – a center for innovation and consolidation of solutions aimed at increasing the quality of urban life in Timișoara. This stage of transformation of our university community comes as a result of the constant concerns that UVT has had, in recent years, for development through "Green & Digital" projects, which has given us the opportunity to become the first university in Romania to host a Living Lab accredited by The European Network of Living Labs (EnoLL). It follows that through the future projects that will be carried out in this innovation center, in which UVT researchers will be involved, together with students and experts from various fields, there will be opened concrete possibilities for collaboration between the West University of Timișoara, the local public administration and community stakeholders.
The second theme of today's debates brought to the fore Timisoara SmartCity Strategy 2022-2027, through which the Timișoara City Hall proposes to the public and the university community advanced digitization and automation solutions dedicated to the urban public domain, a large project, to which UVT will contribute with sectoral expertise.
