Cultural heritage is recognized as a driver and enabler for sustainable development. Its reuse / adaptive reuse and valorisation plays a crucial role in attracting tourism, increasing employability, advancing the region’s economic potentials, producing urban and regional development, while prolonging the heritage lifespan. However, many heritage sites are not recognized by their governments and lack the tourism awareness and publicity. The unclear strategy for developing and marketing these sites, induce the loss of their unique values. Additionally, the inappropriateness of the facilities and/or services in such sites, produce a repellent effect for visitors. The South-Mediterranean region (3) is characterized by numerous overlooked heritage sites that are poorly publicized for the tourism industry. This drawback reflects in the academic sector that needs to acquire the suitable skills for innovative Management of Cultural Heritage via Tourism Development. The academia requires the inauguration of a blended education that delivers an intermediate shade between Heritage, Planning, Tourism, and Economics. The project aims to delineates the drivers connected to the potentials of cultural heritage in the context of developing a touristic destination, encouraging a socio-economic recovery. From another angle, it also investigates the role of touristic sites in promoting the preservation and revival of heritage assets. The project will implement Intensive Study Programs (ISP) in six universities, promoting peer-learning approaches while allowing the urban development of the case studies in Italy, Spain, Egypt and Tunisia. It will provide a Strategic Partnership between HEIs, in order to address the issues found in Heritage Management education associated with tourism promotion, addressing the insufficient exploitation of heritage assets (tangible & intangible). The project will approach the field of heritage management by tackling 6 main threads: Urban Planning, Socio-Economic Planning, Architecture Directives, Creative Usage, Environmental Efficiency, and Circular Economy. The project has a cross-sectorial approach, as it will involve several sectors during the ISPs, including the academia, business, tourism, heritage authorities, local government, and local citizens. The project will deliver 6 main Intellectual Outputs that will be accessible to students, teachers and professional bodies, active in the field of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. 1) The Intensive Study Programs will provide theoretical and practical development of Cultural Heritage case studies. Developed on different phases, each ISP will be available for students from the four beneficiary universities. ISPs will increase students’ exposure, contributing to internationalization and mobility activities. 2) Case study-based ISPs will provide proposals to develop and actual overlooked local heritage sites with the contribution of experts in the field of Heritage Management and local authorities. 3) The output of each case study-based ISP will be published as “Tourism-led Heritage Development” guiding manuals for each of the selected case study. 4) Detailed factsheets will be developed and publicized about the designated case study heritage site of each University. 5) TOURITAGE micro-lab will be initiated to assist researcher in the survey and mapping of the designated case study, while being an important asset for future researchers. 6) A final international exhibition & forum will take place at the end of the project, to present the findings of the project to the wider public. It will exhibit students’ work across the 6 different heritage sites. The event will encompass the launching the developed guiding manuals for “Tourism-led Heritage Development” for the different investigated case studies, where ideas, views and methods can be exchanged for future development and progress and expansion with other universities, businesses and local authorities. The f

Engineering and in general STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education and practice is expensive, can drain precious resources (materials, energy etc.) and can be very time consuming (in setting up of physical experiments and different trial and error efforts). That is why numerical modelling is steadily gaining ground in a range of STEM related fields ranging from mechanical reliability of bridges to the design of medically implantable devices. Numerical modelling allows for quick and inexpensive testing without needing to build physical devices, gives insight and understanding into different phenomena, can be used to design products/solutions and can be used to optimize processes. Furthermore in order to create real world solutions and to transform the education, the technical training needs to be coupled with business training. PYTHAGORAS addresses those needs and will provide a total of 8 educational modules (physical and online) covering topics from numerical modelling and design to entrepreneurship and business skills. Those modules can stand alone and can be used to update and modernize existing curricula. The education will be applied for solving real life problems with (3 expected) case studies specified from Egypt and Tunisia and with the students presenting a business case on the solutions they developed. The training will be for the next generation of innovators: University graduate and undergraduate students and professionals (target is over 200) and for professors who will be shaping the next generation of students (target 20). The activities also include setting up of interconnected labs and engaging the labour market. The impact will be on increase of the skill set of the participants, improvement of employment prospects, development of an engineering innovation culture where modernized knowledge (based on advanced numerical and digital methods) is applied and taken to the market.