EUTOPIA MORE has announced the new leads for the second Connected Communities(CC ) selection round. A total of ten innovative initiatives have been nominated.

For TU Dresden, Prof. Hans-Peter Wiesmann and Dr. Benjamin Kruppke were selected to lead the community "Agile in Biomechanics". This selection was made by the central team of Workpackage 3 of EUTOPIA MORE. Each university commits to lead a CC until 2026. The appointed members will drive the development of integrated thematic networks and foster collaboration between professors, researchers and students at different locations.

The main goal of the Connected Community is to increase the international visibility of students and stakeholders. This is done through the organization of conferences, exchange programs and the design of modern curricula. In addition, joint initiatives are undertaken to acquire funding for major projects, to enable successful publications through joint research and to promote the exchange of skills that contribute to the development of complementary expertise.

Dr. Kruppke works in the Connected Community "Agile in Biomechanics" together with a group of scientists including Maurizio Busacca from Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Richard King from University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire, Arnab Palit from the University of Warwick, Bulcsú Sándor and Zoltán Bálint from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and Bart Jansen from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Together, they are implementing the new teaching concept "Agile Project Management with Scrum" at the CC, where students learn agile methods and apply them in practical projects. This concept requires and promotes independent work in accordance with research-based learning principles and addresses the new possibilities of artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing in research and teaching. Interdisciplinary expertise is integrated through collaboration with partners from the EUTOPIA network, and the projects are iteratively improved and adapted in an agile manner in regular presentations to stakeholders. The aim is to transfer this teaching concept to other areas and promote collaboration between different universities.

In the following Connected Communities, employees of the TUD Dresden University of Technology (TUD) are represented as partners, while the management lies with the respective universities:

• Prof.ⁱⁿ Bärbel Fürstenau (Dean of Studies, Business Education and Management Training) and Dr.ⁱⁿ Ianina Scheuch (Research Associate, Chair of Business Education and Management Training) will be partners of the CC "Sustainable Well-being for People & Planet / Caring communities". The lead of the CC is at the NOVA University in Lisbon (NOVA).
  This CC aims to develop learning and teaching formats that treat personal well-being and planetary sustainability as linked concepts. It addresses major societal challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, educational quality and health.
• Prof. Ivo Sbalzarini (Chair of Scientific Computing for Systems Biology) will participate in the Connected Community "Bioimage Analyses"; the CC is led by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). The CC combines bioimaging and deep learning to address biomedical challenges. They integrate informatics methods for image analysis, citizen science and biomedical advances. Non-university stakeholders are involved to ensure the relevance of the work to society.
• Dr. Catalin Stefan (Head of the INOWAS research group, Institute of Groundwater Management, Department of Hydro Sciences) will participate in the CC "Digitization for hydro-climatic risk reduction". The lead of the CC is at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) The CC aims to mitigate hydro-climatic risks through joint research and to integrate them into educational programs.

Dr. Benjamin Kruppke is an experienced scientist with extensive expertise in biomaterials research. Since completing his PhD in 2017, he has focused on the development of biomimetic materials for bone replacement and has headed the Bioresponsive Materials Systems and Bioinspired Composites Group since 2019. As Principal Investigator, he leads BMBF and DFG projects and has been involved in various research projects, including the Collaborative Research Center/Transregio 79 "Materials for tissue regeneration in systemically diseased bone" and the BMBF project BIOMATGAST. Dr. Kruppke also has extensive experience in material characterization and analysis as well as in the cultivation of stem cells for tissue engineering. He is a member of the Young Scientist Forum of the German Society for Biomaterials and the German Society for Materials Science and got awarded a teaching award from the GFF of TU Dresden in 2023.