The Arqus Twinning Initiative aims to strengthen cooperation between Arqus universities through short-term mobility schemes and to enable the implementation of joint learning and teaching activities. Leipzig teachers from the Neuromorphic Information Processing and Bioinformatics departments met with Spanish colleagues from the Faculty of Computer Science and Telecommunications at the University of Granada.
During the three-day-visit, an intense interdisciplinary collaboration was developed in 4 main areas:
- Definition of a common "language" for better mutual understanding.
- Presentation of the respective research and teaching activities.
- Discussing the organization of potential curricular structures of cooperative teaching.
- Reviewing the possibilities of a joint degree programme or an international module in the field of cyber security combined with neurological or biological approaches.
Although the stay was too short to plan all future activities in detail, it was decided, among other things, to organise a summer school to respond to the increasing demand for cybersecurity experts. In addition, exchanges will continue to take place online to discuss topics such as a joint degree programme and the possibilities of cooperative doctoral studies in computational biology.
The twinning initiative has been tremendously successful for the Leipzig and Granada teachers in terms of their short-term research and teaching goals. This type of collaboration contributes greatly to the Arqus members' goals of improving the quality of learning and teaching through interdisciplinary and research-based approaches, and defining new cooperative curricula that can better respond to today's economic and societal challenges.
For more information on the Arqus Twinnings, visit the European University Alliance’ website.