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We're strengthening our role in shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business, having secured innovation funding with partners in the Arqus European University Alliance.
The European AI Sandbox for Entrepreneurial Learning (EAS-EL) project will be funded by €2 million from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Higher Education Initiative, of which €275,000 will come to Durham.
AI Sandbox: a secure space for innovation
The new funding will support AI innovation, skills development, and economic growth, by creating and promoting an 'AI Sandbox' - a secure innovation space.
This will help initially university spinouts, start-up enterprises, and local Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), across nine European universities and their regions, to deploy AI in their business models.
Six of the Arqus members are full partners on the project: Graz, Durham, Maynooth, Granada, Leipzig, and Vilnius. Three are associate partners: Minho, Padua, and Lyon 1.
The members will work with delivery partners ZWI (Unicorn Start-Up and Innovation Hub) and EY (Ernst and Young) to deliver the AI Sandbox, as well as entrepreneurship training and develop guidance for responsible AI governance.
Project leaders hope it will help students, researchers, and others test AI-based ideas and develop them into enhanced business models and processes.
The project will run from September 2026 to August 2028, enabling around 4,000 participants to develop their entrepreneurial and AI skills.
Durham's role
We will co-lead on the operation and knowledge exchange of the AI Sandbox, contributing expertise in advanced research computing and AI infrastructure.
We will help shape approaches to responsible AI usage that align with European standards, and share the new tools with our spinout companies, student start-ups, and partners in North East England.
The work complements our strengths in high-performance computing, research commercialisation, and student enterprise.
We are part of the North East AI Growth Zone, operate the TechUP programme to enable women to break into tech, and, with Microsoft, are establishing an AI Skills Centre of Excellence at Durham.
EAS-EL is the first externally funded collaborative project we have secured since joining the Alliance as an associate member in 2024.
We have also built strong links across the Alliance's research, education, and innovation activities. Colleagues are working together across climate change and sustainability, heritage and identity, research support, teaching innovation, PhD support, student mobility, and libraries.
