The R&D Institute Project

The R&D Institute was developed through the Structural Funds project Research, Development and Innovation Institute: High-Tech Products for Sustainable Development, PRO-DD, financed by POS-CCE, Axis 2, 2.2.1, ID123, SMIS 2637, Contract no. 11/2009, benefiting from a substantial contribution from Transilvania University of Brașov. The completion of the project, i.e. the construction of laboratory buildings and the purchase of software and equipment, lasted 4 years and was completed on the 31st of October 2013.

The R&D Institute develops as an integrated institute, based on the principle of complementarity in terms of both the activity of the research centres and the technological equipment. The research centres can jointly create complex products, each of which addresses a stage or component in the process leading to the final product. From another perspective, the comprehensive nature of our university reflects on the research activity through the concept of an integrated institute. The complementarity of technological equipment entails that the Institute's project aimed to acquire diverse high-tech equipment so as to support the collaboration between the research centres - an essential feature of the R&D Institute.

The strategic objectives of the Institute's project refer to increased competitiveness, transferability and visibility of R&D activities in the area of high-tech products for sustainable development. The operational objectives are set out below:

  • to design and build the Institute's premises pursuing the concept of sustainable energy (implementation of renewable energy systems, energy-efficient buildings and low energy losses, energy management);
  • to develop research infrastructure that should support excellence research in the field of sustainable energy and high-tech products and that should be competitive at a European level and display uniqueness at national level;
  • to design and implement a resource management system so as to enable effective use of the infrastructure and to attract beneficiaries from the regional and national research and economic environment;
  • to develop an active interface for the promotion of the project at an international, national and regional level;

The main achievements of the R&D project lie in the construction of the institute’s laboratory buildings, which all serve the general objective of the project (sustainable development) and in the acquisition of high-tech equipment that makes up the high-performance research infrastructure. These achievements consist in:

  • 11 low-energy buildings, used as laboratories but also as experimental test stands for 1: 1 scale energy efficiency solutions. One of these buildings (the L7 lab) has been turned into a Nearly Zero Energy Building from Conventional Sources;
  • 68 integrated lines of high-tech equipment for scientific research;
  • 18 software packages for designing and modeling products and processes.