Description
UNI, Ente Italiano di Normazione, is Italy’s official standardisation body, entrusted with developing, publishing, and promoting standards to support innovation, competitiveness, environmental and consumer protection, and overall quality across products, services, and professional practices. Representing Italy in European and international standardisation organisations, UNI plays a key role in ensuring that national priorities contribute to shaping harmonised global standards.
The collaboration between HSbooster and UNI is multi-dimensional, involving strategic dialogue, direct support for the development of CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs), and mutual participation in events aimed at strengthening the research-to-standardisation pathway.
As part of its structured outreach to National Standards Bodies across Europe, HSbooster, through its partner Dansk Standard, established direct dialogue with UNI. This continuous exchange is key to mapping national standardisation efforts and ensuring that EU-funded projects can access accurate, up-to-date information on standardisation. UNI’s strategic insights contribute to the effectiveness of HSbooster’s consultancy model, helping research projects navigate the standards landscape more effectively.
UNI has actively supported the development of several CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs) backed by HSbooster. For the NanoMECommons project, UNI is acting as the secretariat for a CEN Workshop launched in May 2024, focused on revising CWA 17815:2021 to establish a common language for materials characterisation and modelling. In the VARCITIES project, UNI is leading the development of a CWA that provides guidelines for implementing nature-based, socio-cultural, and digital visionary solutions in urban environments, with an emphasis on health and well-being. Although UNI did not act as the secretariat for the ARISA and i-TRIBOMAT projects, it was involved in the broader funding landscape for their CWAs, demonstrating a consistent commitment to supporting standardisation across research initiatives within the HSbooster.eu framework.
HSbooster was an invited contributor to the UNI Workshop "Boosting Research Results Through Standardisation", held online on 20 July 2022. This event facilitated direct engagement between UNI, researchers, and the HSbooster team, showcasing practical opportunities for aligning research outputs with standardisation processes and sharing success stories from funded projects.
UNI’s contributions help ensure that EU-funded projects are equipped with the tools and support needed to develop, adopt, or contribute to standards. In turn, HSbooster.eu supports UNI’s objectives by raising awareness in the research community of how standardisation can amplify the impact and uptake of innovation.
Together, HSbooster.eu and UNI are reinforcing a European innovation ecosystem where standards play a central role in translating research into societal and economic value.