From June 2024 to January 2025, APRE—in collaboration with the FORGING consortium—hosted the in-person event series “Novel Enabling Technologies for a Sustainable Future.”
The series brought together a wide range of stakeholders from academia to industry fields to co-create innovative use cases, for socially responsible and environmentally sustainable emerging technologies. These efforts were guided by the priority clusters defined in WP2 and WP3 of FORGING, with the shared goal of accelerating sustainable impact through strategic tech adoption.
Each workshop featured two main sessions. The first included a keynote by an expert offering technical insights on the focus topic, followed by an overview of the FORGING project and a presentation of promising technologies identified through earlier clustering activities. In the second session, participants joined facilitated working groups to explore how these technologies could address specific human needs, collaboratively shaping concrete use cases.
The collaborative exercise used a human-centric, need-driven approach aligned with Industry 5.0 principles. This methodology emphasized evaluating new technologies based on their societal and human benefits, rather than just technical features. It began by identifying real, sector-specific issues to ensure discussions focused on pressing needs and solutions rooted in human-centered values.
Overall, more than 130 experts from across the European Union were actively involved in the event series, a total of 22 use-cases were co-created in all six technological frameworks of Industry 5.0, and around 10 specific industries and/or application sectors were covered.
More details about the workshops series, including description of the use-cases, can be found HERE.