According to the survey of World Economic Forum [tinyurl.com/jzlr5le], Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the one of the top technological drivers of change for future of jobs, employment, skills and workforce strategy in the 4th Industrial Revolution. According to Forbes prediction, embedded smart sensors, remote monitoring systems, big data, data analytics, and machine learning will be considered as the top 5 engineering skills in 2020 [tinyurl.com/jajppcp]. In order to prepare the society for such an enormous diversity, modernising Higher Education (HE) towards integrating IIoT skills for engineers is an extreme requirement.The main goal of the IoTRAIN project is to achieve the modernization and internationalization of higher education in Iran and Iraq, taking into account the huge changes introduced by Internet technologies in society and business, and to design, develop and enact teaching, peer-production and continuous improvement processes. IoTRAIN is particularly designed to target the growing demand of professional IIoT skills by enhancing the IIoT-related trainings in Iranian and Iraqis HE institutions (HEI). In this regard, IoTRAIN covers a careful analysis of existing and future technological gaps in IIoT and provides required trainings towards improving competitiveness of future Iranian and Iraqis engineers. IoTRAIN delivers an IIoT competence model consisting of the state-of-the-art skills in IIoT at the European and international standard levels. The provided model adopts up-to-date training materials of the European partners of the project and provides necessary high-level training with the aim of improving competitiveness of future Iranian and Iraqi. Furthermore, IoTRAIN delivers a Digital Engineering competence model consisting of the state-of-the-art skills in digitalization for engineers and experts following European and international standards.

GraDAna consists of 5 EU partners (3 top HEIs+2 SMEs) and 7 top Iranian HEIs. The involved Iranian HEIs lead research & education nationwide and are geographically balanced. The project seeks to foster HE cooperation between EU and Iran. It improves entrepreneurship and employability of Iranian HE graduates by elevating their competences in the emerging field of Data Analytics (DA). Involved EU partners have outstanding background in DA and related disciplines. GraDAna transfers know-hows, experiences and best-practices to Iranian HEIs through its sustainable international university-enterprise cooperation plans.GraDAna aims at:Exploiting Iran’s potentials in science and industry as a “terra incognita”, especially after the recent removal of long time sanctions and new cooperation agreements between Iran and EuropeansImproving entrepreneurship, employability and competitiveness of graduates through modernised trainings in DA and related disciplinesSupporting the 2nd largest unemployed group of graduates in Iran (IT sector) by enhancing their professional competencesAddressing “Iranian Governmental Policy on Developing Strategies to Support VET for HE Graduates”Proving the extrovert, multicultural and collaborative EU approach to globalizationSharing European expertise from internationally renowned HEIs and cross-fertilization with Iranian priorities in HEInclusion of regional business/industry stakeholders in the project events.GraDAna has strong impacts on:Capacity building in HRM through training and mobility of HE staff and graduatesAdvancing international competitiveness of Iranian IT sector by modernizing domain specific know-how in lines with European standardsStimulating successful entrepreneurship and economic growth in Iran by shortening the gap between HE & enterprises in IT sectorSustainable dissemination and exploitation of the project results in micro and macro levels through engagement of regional/national/international stakeholders.

The educational system in Iraq and Iran is facing many challenges such as lack of professional skills and competencies of teachers, weakness of methods and applications, inadequate access to technology, lack of sufficient knowledge and ability to exploit technology. PC universities have overcome these challenges.The aim of OPATEL consists in establishing and developing a center in IR&IQ unis to train staff and students by using an Online Platform for TEaching and learning to be as a hub for using best practices of ICT in education, as well as raising competencies of lecturers and teachers by enhancing learning processes of students.Wider Objectives:- Establishing a well-equipped center for E-Learning in partner unis- Transfer of EU-Experience in areas of ICT, skills development and merge new generations in this experience.- Training and following up with staff and students on how to develop, share learning objects, and collaborate their courses, presentations and exercises on online platforms.- Improving quality of teaching and learning by building the capacity of universities how to evaluate, develop and design e-courses.- Enhancing cooperation with EU partners through mutual visits to develop strategies how to move from teaching to learning and develop scalable sustainable solutions.The use of Online Platform will steer the education in the right direction. Training of staff to enhance and develop their abilities, solving the problems of ICT use in education and creating and publishing common methodology and documentation for lifelong learning, E-learning and training for IR&IQ in accordance with EU-Standards. 3 languages will be used in the project: Arabic, Persian and English. Many factors will be used for dissemination and success of OPATEL such as press and media; presenting progress using websites; participation of staff and students, participation of ministries of high educations and other HEIs.

The goal of the project ZEOCAT-3D is the development of a new bi-functional (two types of active centers) structured catalysts, achieving for the first time a tetramodal pore size distribution (micro-, meso1-, meso2-, macro-porous) and high dispersion of metal active sites for the conversion of methane, coming from different sources as natural gas and biogas, into high value chemicals such as aromatics (benzene, naphthalene, among others) via methane dehydroaromatization (MDA). The main drawbacks associated with this process are: Low methane conversion, low selectivity towards the desired products and the quickly deactivation due to carbon deposition onto catalyst. These problems will be overcome by the use of hierarchical zeolites structures synthetized by 3D-printing and loaded with doped molybdenum nano-oxides. The methodology of the project will go from laboratory to pilot scale demonstration in a real environment. Catalyst design and operation conditions will be optimized for different methane feedstock at lab-scale and then upscaling and construction of a final prototype will be carried out. The optimisation of these catalytic processes will bring enormous advantages for increasing the exploitation of natural gas and biogas, since ZEOCAT-3D is very well in accordance with the programme topic NMBP-24, regarding development industrial process to obtain high value chemicals at the same time that the dependence from the current fossil fuel is reduced.