Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) is an approach to research & innovation (R&I) that anticipates and assesses its potential implications and societal expectations of it to make it inclusive and sustainable. RRI essentially means encouraging civil society input into research and innovation thereby widening responsibility within the context of research and innovation and providing more insights for researchers such as gender equality, open access to results, citizen engagement, science education, and ethical standards.

The TetRRIS project is an EU project implementing Responsible Research and Innovation and Smart Specialisation. Smart specialisation is a policy that encourages regions to set research and innovation priorities based on regional competences in order to streamline investment in key sectors where the region has or wants to build a competitive advantage.

The project involves four pilot regions (Tampere, Karlsruhe, Cantabria and Szeged-Timisoara). The pilot regions are the space where R&I activities produce actual innovation, the project will support its pilot regions to make RRI integration possible within R&I territorial governance (Smart Specialisation).

Richard Tuffs is an advisor to the project and has long experience in regional research and innovation ecosystems, smart specialisation and territorial development. Richard will moderate each of the five episodes.

TetRRIS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 872550. The opinions expressed are those of the speaker(s) only and should not be considered as representative of the European Commission’s official position.