"We are so proud and delighted," states Johan Kostela, Director of KTP, which stands for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
Each year the European Commission holds a competition to highlight good examples of entrepreneurship. This year, the collaboration between Dalarna University and the University of Gävle that involves helping small and medium-sized businesses to become more energy efficient has been selected as one of Sweden's two best projects.
"It's incredibly good news and it's recognition for the hard work being done. We are actually the first to have such a collaborative model," states Martin Norsell, Vice-Chancellor at Dalarna University.
KTP is a project in which recent graduates are employed at companies and work towards the development of the speciific company in a field that relates to the students' educational backgrounds. The University benefits since it acquires important knowledge for further research. The graduate can remain at the company for a maximum of two years, and throughout the entire period, both Dalarna University and the University of Gävle provide a qualified supervisor and business coach, as well as laboratory facilties where required.
The EU competition will be held November 25-27 in Helsinki, Finland.