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STEMMING Green Innovation – Agentic AI and Quantum-Secure STEM Talent for Smart Solar Europe 

STEMMING helps European educational institutions prepare young people to create the clean energy, digital technologies and businesses that Europe will need in the future.

Europe’s green and digital transition requires a new generation of STEM graduates equipped not only with advanced technical knowledge, but also with entrepreneurial, digital and sustainability skills. Universities play a key role in preparing students to develop innovative solutions in strategic areas such as renewable energy, artificial intelligence and secure digital technologies. However, many higher education programmes still lack integrated approaches that combine technical excellence with innovation, entrepreneurship and real-world application.

The STEMMING project addresses this challenge by strengthening higher education institutions across Europe through a shared framework for Green Digital STEM Entrepreneurship. The project supports universities in embedding entrepreneurship, digital and green competences into STEM education while fostering stronger collaboration between academia, industry and regional innovation ecosystems. It also promotes inclusive learning opportunities and encourages the commercialisation of research and innovation.

To achieve these objectives, STEMMING develops activities across four main strands:

• Innovative education and training: designing stackable micro-credentials, challenge-based learning and interdisciplinary curricula aligned with European competence frameworks such as DigComp, GreenComp and EntreComp.
• Digital learning environments: creating AI-supported learning and mentoring services through the Green STEM Educational Agent Lab, alongside Digital Twin Studios for smart energy and renewable technologies.
• Innovation and entrepreneurship: supporting students and researchers in developing entrepreneurial skills, validating ideas, creating start-ups and strengthening links between higher education and industry.
• Regional collaboration and knowledge transfer: fostering cooperation between universities, businesses and regional authorities, while sharing good practices and supporting the replication of project results across Europe.

EARLALL contributes to the project by strengthening links between higher education institutions and regional innovation ecosystems. The association supports dissemination, stakeholder engagement, policy dialogue and the transfer of project results, ensuring that STEMMING’s innovative approaches can be adopted and scaled across European regions.

STEMMING is funded by the EIT Higher Education Initiative under its Call for Proposals 2025.

Objectives

• OBJ1 – Institutional change: by M24, deploy 8 stackable, assessment-backed STEMMING mini-credentials that support at least 21 STEM module instances and challenge pathways across the four beneficiary HEIs, and pilot-transfer them to the three associated HEIs, supported by signed top-management commitment letters, departmental implementation plans and EIT-quality-aligned certification procedures.
• OBJ2 – Scale training: deliver at least 8,000 successful participants (approximately 7,000 students, 500 academic staff and 500 non-academic staff) completing >=10 learning hours with competency assessment, provide 1,000 AI-assisted and human-reviewed mentoring journeys, and achieve a consortium-wide target of >=35% women participants with targeted support for under-represented groups.
• OBJ3 – New infrastructures: deploy four fully implemented Green STEM Educational Agent Lab nodes integrated with beneficiary HEI LMS platforms, make three associated adoption nodes operational for transfer and scale-out, and launch at least four Solar and Smart Energy Digital Twin Studio pilots connected to industry data, AI models, photonics and quantum-secure scenarios.
• OBJ4 – Entrepreneurship outcomes: support at least 7 start-up or scale-up teams for >=2 months (EITHE03.1), establish 3 start-ups (EITHE04.1), and facilitate >=EUR 15k innovation revenues plus >=EUR 25k external capital attracted by supported start-ups (Core KPIs EITHE02.4 and EITHE06.1).
• OBJ5 – Partnerships and employability: create 6 new cross-border partnerships (EITHE20), deliver at least 20 internships linked to project challenges and mini-credentials, and provide structured career-readiness support through AI-assisted and human mentoring pathways.
• OBJ6 – Knowledge sharing and scale-out: publish an open STEMMING Replication Toolkit (framework, syllabi, datasets, platform APIs, QA rubrics and deployment notes), produce at least 20 documented success stories, and participate actively in EIT HEI Community joint activities throughout the project.

Outputs

STEMMING contributes to Europe’s strategic autonomy in the energy transition by transforming how STEM talent is trained for smart solar, secure digital infrastructures and AI-enabled energy-system innovation.

Scale is credible because STEMMING distributes delivery across four beneficiary HEIs and three associated adopter HEIs, with recruitment channelled through multiple departmental entry points and complementary online formats. The 8,000 target is deliberately split across the three participant categories required by the call – approximately 7,000 students, 500 academic staff and 500 non-academic staff – so that institutional innovation capacity grows together with student talent.

Significance goes beyond learning throughput. STEMMING creates durable institutional mechanisms – innovation studios, strengthened KTO/TTO functions, a certification and mini-credential pathway, a permanent diversity-and-inclusion support mechanism, and operational AI-human tutoring services – while converting selected student and staff projects into supported venture teams and market-tested innovations in smart energy and quantum-secure infrastructure.

Entrepreneurship competences are built as a continuous layer rather than a final workshop. Across the learner journey, participants practise problem framing, market discovery, sustainability reasoning, IP awareness, venture communication and investment readiness, with the AI Venture Coach and human mentors reinforcing these competences in parallel with technical work. This design makes the participant scale directly relevant to employability, start-up creation and research-to-market capacity.