Novel material’s design is a geopolitical challenge to provide safe, sustainable and cost-efficient industrial products; once in the environment, they face their (intended or not) exposure to biotic factors as microbial cells, which can cause high economic burdens. Research in the cell-surface interaction field is being addressed from either a biological or a materials science perspective, usually with limited outputs due to the complexity of this topic. The application of both, state of the art spectroscopy and microscopy analytic technologies, microbiology and systems biology tools to study microbial-surface interactions can lead to a better understanding the processes occurring at their interface, which will contribute to provide ad-hoc solutions for materials design with enhanced properties, such as more durable materials (reducing losses), improved antimicrobial surfaces (health sector) or better microbial supports to increase the productivity of bioprocesses (pharma, food, agriculture). The JSI’s excellent track in basic and applied multidisciplinary research areas, particularly in the combination of physical, chemical and biological processes influencing the environment and human affairs. SurfBio research package (spectrometry, imaging, smart biocarriers, nanoparticles characterization, microbiology, systems biology and bioinformatics), will reinforce JSI to successfully address the interdisciplinary of the topic. Thus, JSI will lead an emerging discipline, coordinating expert institutions in synergistic fields, finally launching an Innovation Hub to provide research services and assessment to material designers and biotechnology researchers, academy, industry or policy makers. Twinning call matches the needs of the Slovenian research to boost their potential and visibility National and Internationally. Expertise of partners in promotion, funding search and project management and their wide network will support the JSI upgrade balanced and responsively.

The AGRICORE project proposes a novel tool for improving the current capacity to model policies dealing with agriculture by taking advantage of latest progresses in modelling approaches and ICT. Specifically, the AGRICORE tool will be built as an agent-based approach where each farm is to be modelled as an autonomous decision-making entity which individually assesses its own context and makes decisions on the basis of its current situation and expectations. This modelling approach will allow to simulate the interaction between farms and their context (which will account for environment, rural integration, ecosystem services, land use and markets) at various geographic scales – from regional to global. To do so, advances in big data, artificial intelligence algorithms, mathematical solvers and cloud computing services will be applied to optimise the extremely-long parameterisation and calibration phase required by current agent-based tools, to better mimic the modelling of farmers’ behaviour and interactions, to credibly assess the local effects of global events and EU policies, and in general to improve policy design, impact assessments and monitoring. The AGRICORE tool will be made as a highly modular and customisable suite, and it will be released as an open-source project so institutions can transparently update and improve the tool as needs arise.

Recyclable materials recovery is a key element of the circular economy and the EU Green Deal. It is typically performed manually at large scale Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) installed close to dense urban areas. Recent advances in AI and robotics have enabled the automation of several MRF activities. However, they target large waste volumes and are not cost-effective for smaller, less accessible areas. To accommodate the latter, portable material recovery units can be deployed nearby. Despite the increasing demand for portable units, offerings lack intelligent, automated components that could significantly increase their productivity. To fill this gap, RECLAIM will develop a portable, robotic MRF (prMRF) tailored to small-scale material recovery. The proposal exploits well-tested technology in robotics, AI and data analytics which is improved to facilitate distributed material recovery. RECLAIM adopts a modular multi-robot/multi-gripper approach for material recovery, based on low cost Robotic Recycling Workers (RoReWos). An AI module combines imaging in the visual and infrared domain to identify, localize and categorize recyclables. The output of this module is used by a multi-RoReWo team that implements efficient and accurate material sorting. Further, a citizen science approach will increase social sensitivity to the Green Deal. This is accomplished via a novel Recycling Data-Game that enables and encourages citizens to participate in project RTD activities by providing annotations to be used in deep learning for the re-training of the AI module. RECLAIM developments will be implemented and repeatedly assessed in demanding, real material recovery tasks. Three different scenarios will attest its effectiveness and applicability in a broad range of locations that face material recovery challenges. This will pave the way for the prMRF market uptake and provide a major boost in making Europe zero polluting, climate-neutral, sustainable and globally competitive.

Prompted by the dire forecasts for increased resource extraction and waste generation, and their detrimental effects on climate and biodiversity, a Circular Economy Action Plan has been put forth where electronics and electronic equipment have been identified as a priority product group with circularity potential. With an annual growth in waste of 2%, this group is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, while less than 40% of electronic waste is recycled within the EU. There is a need to explore new options for electronics that are designed for reuse, repair, and high-quality recycling. To address this challenge, several factors must be considered such as the Industrial End Users (IEU) specifications, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and the products end-of-life (EoL). Printed electronics (PE) is an additive manfucaturing method that can address these challenges and is characterized by its versatility, scalability, and low material usage, thus making it an ideal candidate for a circular production of electronics in general. Flexible and even stretchable electronics can be obtained with this method by printing conductive and dielectric inks on flexible/stretchable substrates opening new applications in the market. However, similar to traditional electronic production methods, current life cycle for a PE product starts with materials (substrate, conductive and dielectric materials) obtained through mining of raw materials. These materials are put into production lines, consisting of large volume analogue printing, gluing on discrete components and lamination processes. The EoL are either landfills or incineration, which in both cases, destroys precious materials, thus forcing the use of mined raw materials. The main goal of Sustain-a-Print (SaP) is to open new life-cycle routes and to design and implement sustainability into each step of the life-cycle. This includes choice of materials, their usage, their origin, their processing, assembly, and EoL.

The SAFARI project aims to develop new 2D materials using sustainable and safe processes. The project focuses on creating hybrid formulations of MXenes and Graphene (Gr), which are known to possess unique and desirable properties such as thermal stability electrical conductivity. The goal of the project is to develop sustainable and safe materials that can be used in a wide range of applications such as biosensors, conductive ink, and EMI shielding. The SAFARI project begins with the preparation of precursor compounds known as MAX phases. These compounds are then used to produce two types of MXenes (Ti3C2 and Cr2C) which are further functionalized to enhance their properties and increase their affinity with Graphene. The resulting 2D hybrid materials are created using two different methods, and their structural, morphological, and functional properties are thoroughly examined. One of the main strengths of the SAFARI project is that is allinged with the SSbD principles. Thus assessment of the toxicological and eco-toxicological profiles of the new materials through a range of tests and assays will be conducted. In conclusion, the SAFARI project represents a significant step forward in the development of 2D hybrids with MXenes/Graphene for use in a wide range applications.