Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC)
The Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC) strengthens HU’s institutional capacity to design, coordinate, and sustain externally funded research projects. It supports strategic alignment, collaborative governance within consortia, and high-quality implementation across the full research project lifecycle.
Objective
The objective of RPC is to embed robust project design and management practices within HU research. By strengthening institutional coordination, governance, and lifecycle thinking, RPC enables research teams to initiate, lead, and sustain complex, collaborative projects aligned with societal challenges and partner ecosystems, funding frameworks, and HU’s strategic research ambitions.
Results
- Strengthened capacity for research project design and coordination
- Improved governance and role clarity within multi-partner collaborations
- Greater sustainability of externally funded research initiatives
How we work
Operating across different levels, RPC connects research strategies with practice by fostering shared methods, reflective learning, and cross-institutional collaboration. This approach enhances consistency, scalability, and long-term impact by strengthening HU’s role within collaborative research programmes.
Projectupdates
Looking Ahead: RPC Strategic Priorities for 2026–2027 and Upcoming Interactive Workshop on November 5th
The Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC) is gearing up for Academic Year 2026–2027. Building on the reflections and decisions from our recent strategic kickoff gathering, the RPC has outlined a clear framework to strengthen HU’s research project design capacity, expand external funding impact, and foster collaborative project leadership.
Shaping the Strategic Horizon for 2026–2027
During the kickoff meeting, members reflected on our collective achievements, including a strong culture of initiative, cross-lectorate synergy, and expanding networks across European communities—while addressing critical operational and institutional challenges. To guide our efforts through 2026–2027, the RPC has committed to several key strategic directions:
Sustaining Bi-Lectorate Collaboration: We will continue maintaining the collaborative bridge between the Process Innovation and Information Systems (PI&IS) and Organisations in Digital Transition (ODT) research groups, combining other research groups from complementary disciplines and expertise across the Knowledge Centre and HU’s boundaries.
Targeting High-Impact EU and National Funding: The Centre’s primary strategic funding focus will centre on EU programmes (specifically Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, and Erasmus+ Key Action 2) alongside large-scale NWO actions.
Balancing Project Scales: To broaden opportunities for researchers, we are striking a deliberate balance between large-scale consortia, which deliver broad network reach and institutional impact, and agile, smaller-scale projects that foster deeper individual researcher engagement and direct educational integration.
Building on Established Foundations & Trusted Partnerships: Future proposals will leverage our existing project successes and momentum (such as initiatives stemming from ARISA, FUTURED, SMARCO, and Digital4Sustainability) while investing earlier in proposal preparation and cultivating long-term, trusted consortium networks.
Strengthening Institutional Project Design Capacity: We continue to embed lifecycle thinking and early-stage project architecture into proposals, demonstrating HU's research management capabilities from concept to implementation.
Upcoming Event: RPC Meeting & Proposal Design Workshop
To translate these strategic priorities into concrete actions and proposals, we are pleased to announce our next gathering:
Date: Thursday, November 5th, 2026
Focus: EU Project Design & 2026–2027 Proposal Planning
Afternoon Program
EU Project Design Presentation & Workshop
Guided by Quan Zhu and Nerko Hadzi-Vukovic, who recently completed specialized ad-hoc training, this hands-on session will explore practical frameworks, evaluation insights, and methodology for designing competitive European project proposals.
Collective Reflection & Project Ideation for 2026–2027
An interactive strategy block dedicated to reviewing upcoming funding calls, aligning ideas, and discussing research proposal concepts across our teams to build upon ongoing initiatives.
All RPC colleagues and affiliated researchers are invited to participate, share their proposal ideas, and contribute to refining our living strategic agenda.
Would you like to join? Get in touch
RPC Joins Horizon Europe Twinning Initiative "DX-Micro"
The Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC) joined an international consortium submitting the DX-Micro proposal under the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. Submitted under the call HORIZON-WIDERA-2026-02 (Twinning), topic HORIZON-WIDERA-2026-02-WIDENING-01 as a Coordination and Support Action (HORIZON-CSA), the 36-month initiative is titled "Digital Transformation Education through Micro Learning".
Project Scope
The overarching objective of DX-Micro is to tackle the escalating digital transformation skills gap across European industries by advancing research into flexible, modular microlearning architectures. As a WIDERA Twinning project, it establishes an interdisciplinary research and design lab at the coordinating university to experimentally evaluate how diverse learning modalities perform across different technical skill categories and learner demographics. Furthermore, the project integrates artificial intelligence to translate industry-defined competence requirements into personalized, stackable microlearning pathways aligned with European standards.
Participating Institutions and Countries
The consortium unites five higher education institutions from five different countries: Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Türkiye (serving as project coordinator), and the United Kingdom. The participating entities comprise a combination of public bodies and non-profit higher education foundations and research organisations, creating a balanced partnership across digital education, learning analytics, and research administration.
RPC’s Role
Within DX-Micro, the RPC steers the consortium's long-term collaborative governance framework and leads institutional capacity-building in research management. Leveraging its experience across the research project lifecycle, RPC acts as a mentor to establish and integrate a dedicated Research Management Centre at the coordinating institution. Additionally, RPC coordinates international training missions focused on proposal development, consortium management, and professional alignment with the European Research Management Competence framework (RM Comp).
Bridging European Research and Regional Curricula: RPC Co-Hosts Session on "European Partnerships for the Region"
As part of the event, the Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC), in collaboration with the Internationalisation team of the Education, Research & Student Affairs Department, coordinated a session addressing European partnerships for regional impact. The discussion centered on key IP32 priorities, specifically societal issues as a starting point, stimulating and safe learning environments, and portfolio management across education and research.
Participants examined frameworks for systematically aligning and embedding learning outputs from large-scale European collaborative projects into HU’s existing courses and degree programmes. The session guided educators and researchers through structured evaluations covering:
Curricular Added Value: Determining how European project outputs address urgent professional and societal skill demands within existing study tracks.
Direct Adoption vs. Pedagogical Calibration: Assessing whether educational modules can be adopted directly or require recalibration in terms of intended learning outcomes, instructional framing, and credit allocation.
Dual Research–Curriculum Synergy: Emphasizing the vital importance of active student involvement in live research consortia, ensuring that students engage directly in applied research alongside the ongoing integration of project deliverables into degree curricula.
Organized by HU’s internationalisation team, the event brought together contributors and speakers from regional and international knowledge partners, including Utrecht University (UU), University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU), the Utrecht International Center (UIC), and the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA). Through this work, the RPC continues to advance institutional practices that connect transnational project design with regional educational impact.
Connecting Research and Education: HU Symposium Addresses Societal Transitions at ORD 2026
The 2026 Education Research Days Congress (ORD) brought together roughly 850 educational researchers and professionals, from researchers and policymakers to teachers across the Netherlands and Flanders, for three days (1–3 July) in Utrecht, with a shared focus on how education can help address pressing societal challenges. Within that programme, RPC members delivered a paper symposium reflecting on institutional capacity-building for education in transition.
The symposium was chaired by Dr. Mohamed Eledeisy, who gave the keynote speech, reflecting on the role of research in higher education institutions, particularly in domains such as digital transformation, sustainable development, and educational innovation. The transformative pace of change in higher education is increasingly becoming a defining condition of the sector itself, demanding a higher level of adaptability at both institutional and individual levels. Universities are being asked to assume new roles that reach well beyond their traditional remit, with many, including HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU), looking closely at the scope of a fourth mission alongside education, research, and knowledge valorisation; for example, through the promotion of lifelong learning or the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Rather than focusing on a single initiative, the symposium sessions, involving Dr. Pascal Ravesteijn, Dr. Xander Lub and Dr. Steven Haveman, reflected on three European Alliance projects within the Digital Large-Scale Partnership (Digital LSP), each at a different stage of implementation, to critically compare how they co-create coherent workplans and develop educational outputs that integrate applied research results in new educational practices in response to societal transitions in sustainability, digitalisation, and the labour market.
Three sessions were structured to promote interaction and reflection and included researchers, educators and students from Dutch universities. After the presentations, the presenters structured a discussion consisting of three steps:
Small-group reflection on enabling project conditions for transitions
Short plenary exchange on institutional challenges
Identification of shared lessons across universities
Participants were then invited to compare their own institutional experiences with HU's approach. The session concluded with a critical reflection on how transnational collaboration and large-scale partnerships can strengthen research-education portfolio and contribute to societal priorities in the Netherlands.
Read the Paper Symposium Abstract Here
PI&IS and ODT Team Day Training: A Systematic Approach to Research Objective-setting
During a recent teammiddag for the lectorates Process Innovation and Information Systems (PI&IS) and Organisations in Digital Transition (ODT) research groups and team members participated in an intensive workshop session. The 'Research Project Design | Objective-setting Workshop' addressed the fundamental principles of transforming research ideas into structured actions. The training focused on five learning outcomes:
- being able to guide the design process of research projects
- gaining insight into the elements and full lifecycle of a research project
- understanding the principles of effective goal-setting and objective development
- being able to analyze evaluation and review processes through a real case study
- apply key concepts in a hands-on workshop setting
The activity served as a hands-on practicum where participants worked together to apply systematic frameworks and tools to applied research ideas, transforming abstract concepts into logical presentations of ideas. By considering the full scope of the Project Cycle Management (PCM) and utilizing methodologies such as the Logical Framework Matrix (LFM), researchers evaluated and refined their project architectures. As a result of this collaborative effort, participants developed multi-layered project objectives for diverse initiatives, including a partnership proposal addressing AI in the transition towards a circular building industry.
By aligning research ambitions with evaluation criteria, participants enhanced their ability to design specific and achievable large-scale, strategically positioned goals for collaborative partnerships and long-term initiatives. This session is part of the Research Projects Design & Management Centre’s (RPC) mission to embed robust project design practices across PI&IS, ODT.
EU.ACE network: empowering higher education through quality micro-credentials.
Last week, the European Universities on Academic Continuing Education (ACE) network visited our HU. The HU works together within this network to strengthen education for professionals. All week there were workshops and presentations by experts, with experiences from knowledge institutions like Le Cnam in Paris, HSLU in Luzern, Turku UAS in Finland and more EU.ACE partners. From KC DBM, Senior Project Manager Mohamed Eledeisy held a session on European collaboration for institutional innovation and flexible pathways.
About EU ACE
EU.ACE is a consortium of ten European knowledge institutions focused on the development of innovative, tailor-made lifelong development pathways as an integral part of the European education area and knowledge infrastructure in the EU. The network hopes to anchor lifelong-development more strongly in the European Higher Education Area. To this end, among other things, they have formulated a Living Paper, containing a European Framework to include lifelong development as the fourth pillar of the Bologna Process. In December, this paper, to which the HU also contributed, was presented in Brussels.
About the EU ACE visit
EU.ACE was held at HU from 23 to 27 March 2026. They participated in the learning network week "Education for all: empowering higher education through quality micro-credentials." After all, how do you develop successful, stackable micro-credential programmes? How do you string together flexible, stackable modules into a recognised degree? And how do you use online, 'blended' education to improve people's career prospects worldwide? These and other topics were covered over the five days of the visit.
European collaboration for institutional innovation and flexible pathways
One of the sessions at the ACE visit was led by Senior Project Manager Mohamed Eledeisy, where he talked about the importance of European collaboration for course development. In his role at the Research Projects design & management Centre (RPC) he facilitated several projects that focus on the development of digital skills for professionals. During the talk he highlighted the projects Digital4Sustainability,SMARCO and ARISA. These are collaborative projects that work on strategy and curriculum development for digital and AI skills for European professionals.
Kick-off RPC Impact Day: a strong start for impact-driven research
On 21 January, the Lectorate Organisaties in Digitale Transitie, together with the Lectorate Procesinnovatie & Informatiesystemen, participated in an inspiring training day on research impact. Under the guidance of Mohamed Eledeisy and Xiao Peng, colleagues explored how impact can be meaningfully embedded into research projects right from the very start. In an interactive setting, participants worked with core concepts related to impact and examined how these principles are applied within national and European funding programs. By connecting theory to concrete examples, it became clear how impact can be shaped throughout the entire project cycle, from design and implementation to long‑term value creation.
RPC Training Day on Research Impact
The training day, organized by the Research Projects Design and Management Centre (RPC), marked the launch of a new series of trainings aimed at strengthening project management and leadership skills within research. Highlights of the session included the emphasis on impact as a fundamental component of project development, the exploration of funding criteria, the sharing of experiential insights on impact design and implementation, and opportunities for collective reflection and knowledge exchange.
The day concluded with a guided group reflection, enabling participants to deepen their key insights and set the direction for the upcoming sessions. With this promising start, RPC continues to build the expertise needed to realize research that truly makes a difference.
Updates to the next training sessions will follow.
HU researchers involved in the research
