KTH coordinated projects within Horizon Europe
KTH participates in many collaborative research projects funded by the European Union, mainly through the Horizon Europe framework programme. On this page, you can read about the collaborative EU projects that are coordinated by KTH.
Health
HoliCare
Respiratory tract infections (RTIs) are the leading cause of death among infectious diseases in the world, the fifth overall cause of mortality for all ages, and the leading cause of death among children below the age of 5. They are one of the major Poverty-Related Diseases (PRDs), representing 40 percent of deaths and 17 percent of cases reported in Sub-Saharan Africa with 2.4 million deaths caused by RTIs reported in 2016.
The HOLICARE project’s ambition is to tackle the challenge of diagnostics, treatment and prevention of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) in Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) thanks to a holistic approach bringing innovative diagnostics solutions to the population.
Read more about the HoliCare project
Digital, Industry and Space
BioExcel‐3
Life Science is turning into a data-driven and high-performance computing (HPC) dependent research field. BioTeam/Hyperion’s 2022 estimates show that 95 percent of Life Science projects are being dependent on HPC. The rapid response to Covid-19 showed how an EU collaboration between pharma industry, Life Science researchers and supercomputing centres resulted in several newly identified hits now undergoing clinical trials. Life Science is already delivering actual drug candidates within a year by using HPC in general, and BioExcel codes in particular (1000s of papers citing GROMACS or HADDOCK for SARS-CoV-2 simulations).
BioExcel was established in 2015 and further supported in 2019 by the European H2020 programme to accelerate the development and usability of the most widely used European open-source software for computational biomolecular research.
EXTRA-BRAIN
The field of narrow AI is advancing, yet there is an increasing demand for more universal approaches to AI capable of operating across a wider range of applications. The EU-funded EXTRA-BRAIN project aims to develop flexible, hardware-friendly, and energy-efficient AI solutions based on brain-like neural networks. These networks aim to overcome the limitations of current AI methods, such as bounded reliability and excessive data dependence. The project leverages insights from computational neuroscience regarding the brain’s information processing principles, learning schemes, and neuroanatomical structures to design these networks. Supporting the models are data optimisation pipelines and an explainability framework. The project will validate this framework across various use cases with different hardware demands.
CEEC
The CEEC project aims at identifying, improving and implementing novel engineering workflows for the latest modern supercomputers, including aspects such as GPUs, heterogeneous architectures and quantum computing. In particular, focus is also on significant improvement in energy efficiency will be facilitated through efficient exploitation of accelerated hardware architectures (e.g. GPUs) and novel adaptive mixed precision calculations. The efforts of the center are driven by a collection of five different lighthouse cases of significant physical and engineering relevance, ranging from aeronautical to atmospheric flows, with the goal of reaching high technology readiness. All development is done in five European HPC codes which span the entire spectrum of CFD applications, including compressible, incompressible and multiphase flows.
Read more about the CEEC project
MEDALS
The proposed project aims to increase recycling ratio of steel and metals through improved sorting of scrap, better separation of non-wanted tramp elements as well as the valuable alloying elements. Steel can be recycled over and over again while retaining its technical properties. However, contaminations of tramp elements and losses of alloying elements do occur in the solid state and liquid state recovery processes currently employed in the industrial value chain.
Plasma‐PEPSC
Plasma science has been at the forefront of HPC for several decades, driving and at the same time benefiting greatly from innovative hardware and software developments. The overall goal of Plasma-PEPSC is to take this development to the next level, enabling scientific breakthroughs in plasma science Grand Challenges through exascale computing and extreme-scale data analytics. Specifically, we aim to enable unprecedented simulations on current pre-exascale and future exascale platforms in Europe to control plasma-material interfaces, optimize magnetically confined fusion plasmas, design next-generation plasma accelerators and predict space plasma dynamics in the Earth’s magnetosphere. We achieve these goals by maximizing the parallel performance and efficiency of four European flagship plasma codes with a large user base: BIT, GENE, PIConGPU, and Vlasiator.
Read more about the Plasma-PEPSC project
OpenCUBE
This project proposes to design OpenCUBE, a full-stack solution of a validated European Cloud computing blueprint to be deployed on European hardware infrastructure. OpenCUBE will develop a custom cloud installation with the guarantee that an entirely European solution like SiPearl processors and Semidynamics RISC-V accelerators can be deployed reproducibly. OpenCUBE will be built on industry-standard open APIs using Open Source components and will provide a unified software stack that captures the different best practices and open source tooling on the operating system, middleware, and system management level. It will thus provide a solid basis for the European cloud services, research, and commercial deployments envisioned to be core for federated digital services via Gaia-X.
Read more about the OpenCUBE project
SoftEnable
The SoftEnable project proposes a new framework for manipulation actions involving deformable delicate objects based on the notion of soft fixture-enabled manipulation primitives. While fixtures by means of robotic grasps or specifically designed workpiece fixtures are routinely applied in industrial robotics applications involving rigid objects such as metal parts, there is a need to generalise these robotic methods to materials and situations that require the robust manipulation of soft or fragile items. The project considers two primary use case applications: to aid workers in healthcare applications with procedures involving personal protective equipment and to provide assistance by means of collaborative robotics in the food processing industry.
Read more about the SoftEnable project
HIYIELD
The steel industry is responsible for around 7 percent of global CO2 emissions. Therefore, the sector’s decarbonisation will play a key role in achieving the EU climate goals for 2050. Scrap steel can make an important contribution. Increasing the use of scrap to minimise pig iron (hot metal) usage and reducing iron ore in coal-fired blast furnaces to reduce CO2 emissions is a method to achieve more sustainable and competitive production. Furthermore, retaining alloying elements in scrap steel will valorise scrap. The EU-funded HIYIELD project will maximise scrap quality by improving technologies for the removal of impurities and optimising use of alloying elements. The approach includes improved scrap identification and classification with tracking in the circular economy.
The project involves researchers from academia and industrial companies in Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece.
Read more about the HIYIELD project
Climate, Energy and Mobility
ESEP4Freight
In the future European mobility system, freight rail plays a key role in making a significant contribution to achieving the goals of the European Green Deal. The fastest and most efficient way to decarbonize freight transport is to shift freight to rail. To achieve this shift, the overall competitiveness of rail in the transport market should be improved. To strengthen the role of freight rail in the transportation market, it is necessary to attract the attention of freight customers. One manner to increase the awareness of rail freight is to provide customers with high-quality and open information about the possibilities of rail transport and the associated benefits of rail freight.
The objective of the ESEP4Freight project is therefore to provide freight customers with an overview of the available rail freight services in Europe via a web platform. This will be supported by the creation of a Web Platform based on an existing map developed by SKGV that identifies freight flows with a higher potential for transport by rail.
Read more about the ESEP4Freight project
FLUWS
FLUWS aims to develop and validate a more flexible, reliable, environmentally friendly and cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) system futureproofed for next-generation concentrating solar power plants operating at higher temperatures and hybridized with PV, two of the main paths for reaching cost-efficiency of CSP. FLUWS validates up to TRL 5 a novel TES concept that ensures elevated thermal efficiency with minimum environmental impact thanks to on the one hand the upcycling of waste and residual materials from the ceramic industry and the use of air as heat transfer fluid and on the other thanks to building on previous consortium know-how in the development of new cost-effective radial packed-bed TES and materials for high-temperature applications.
Read more about FLUWS
I-UPS
I-UPS aims to develop and validate a first-of-a-kind (FOAK), cost-effective and reliable high-temperature industrial heat pump fully integrated in a flexible energy system for industrial medium temperature (~400°C) heat decarbonisation. I-UPS validate up to TRL 5 a FOAK high-temperature heat pump, based on Stirling cycles and exploiting a non-toxic, inert, zero ozone depletion potential and zero global warming potential fluid, able to deliver decarbonized heat up to 400°C. No other commercial alternatives are available achieving this heat delivery temperature at efficiencies higher than 100%.
Read more about I-UPS
RefMap
The mission of RefMap is to develop a digital service aimed at quantifying the environmental footprints of air mobility for airliners and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) at a ""multi-scale"" level, where single-trajectories (micro) and the flow traffic of multiple vehicles (macro) are optimised to minimise their environmental impact in a wide range of communities. RefMap investigates how the aviation business models will be affected by the availability of environmental data for each type and route of air vehicle, as this will enable stricter evidence-based Green policy making in the sector. This will be achieved via the development of the RefMap analytics platform processing environmental and weather data such as wind, noise, CO2 and non-CO2 emissions for both U-space and ATM.
Read more about the RefMap project
RE-INTEGRATE
In the realm of climate-compatible development planning, scientific tools wielded across the EU and African Union (AU) often miss the mark. Uncoordinated and biased model design by various actors has resulted in a failure to reflect country-specific conditions, leading to a lack of ownership and credibility in energy planning. With this in mind, the EU-funded RE-INTEGRATE project is on a mission to establish an inclusive environment for knowledge-sharing and context-specific modelling toolkits. The project aims to revolutionise the strategic energy planning process across the EU and AU, paving the way for more credible and effective outcomes. Addressing the AU’s need for independent modelling approaches, the project unfolds in 8 AU contexts, harnessing local expertise.
Read more about the RE-INTEGRATE project
REPAIR
In addition to CO2, anthropogenic emissions are also made up of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, which are just as harmful to the climate and no less difficult to tackle. Mitigating these gases can significantly accelerate the transition towards a net-zero greenhouse gas EU economy by 2050 and achieve sustainable negative emissions thereafter. The EU-funded REPAIR project will develop two breakthrough technologies to remove non-CO2 gases like methane and nitrous oxide from the atmosphere. One will capture and convert. The other involves direct catalytic conversion. Both solutions will be evaluated in terms of impact in the agricultural and farming sector. A successful outcome will help the EU achieve climate neutrality and create socio-economic impact.
Read more about the REPAIR project
SHARP-sCO2
SHARP-sCO2 addresses key technological challenges to enable the development of a new generation of highly efficient and flexible CSP plants. Keeping on working with CSP-sCO2 power cycles and investigating how to exploit air as operating fluid, SHARP-sCO2 will develop and validate novel enabling technologies in EU top level labs. SHARP-sCO2 will attain high temperatures and cycle efficiency, while guaranteeing reliable and flexible operation. Introducing a smart hybridization with PV by means of an innovative electric heaters, SHARP-sCO2 will maximize sCO2 operation and remuneration, exploiting PV affordability while counting on the unique energy storage capabilities of CSP.
USES4HEAT
In a world grappling with the challenge of meeting IEA net-zero targets, the heating sector remains a stumbling block. Accounting for over a third of energy demand, it is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Recognised as a game-changer for decarbonisation, district heating lacks effective large-scale seasonal energy storage solutions. With this in mind, the EU-funded USES4HEAT project will unveil two groundbreaking, cost-effective, and large-scale thermal energy storage units. These are set to transform district heating networks and industrial heat recovery. Through advanced drilling, innovative pipes, heat pumps, solar tech, and AI-based management tools, USES4HEAT promises a future of reliable, decarbonised heating with minimised environmental impact.
Read more about USES4HEAT
Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Nuclear Science (EURATOM)
artEmis
Public awareness to environmental risk is key for building resilient societies. ArtEmis will develop a smart sensor system, monitoring radon, temperature, acidity and other observables in groundwater in real time. The ground-breaking sensor design will assure affordability, resilience and low power consumption optimizing life cycle management. The project aims to produce 100-200 sensors, that will be deployed in sensitive sites in collaboration with municipalities. Changes in radon concentration have the potential to serve as precursor for earthquakes and volcano eruptions. To advance our knowledge in this field we propose the development of a cheap sensor system, that can be employed on a large scale in earthquake prone areas of Europe.
Read more about the artEmis project