Challenge-Based Mobilities
- A short stay at another INGENIUM university, built around one real problem: a question a laboratory is working on, a brief from a company, something a hospital or a city council needs solved. You work on it with a mentor at the host institution, and it counts inside your degree.
What is a Challenge-Based Mobility?
A Challenge-Based Mobility (CBM) is a short individual stay at one of the ten INGENIUM partner universities, organised around a single challenge. You do not enrol in a course and you do not join a group: you arrive with a question to work on, and someone at the host institution works on it with you.
The challenge is real and it belongs to somebody. It comes from a research group, an academic department, a company, an NGO, a public body or an innovation hub connected to one of the partner universities. Some challenges are prepared in advance by the partners and offered ready to take. Others begin with an idea you bring to your Academic Advisor.
Inside a Pathway Programme, a CBM is part of what you signed up for. There is no separate call and no competition for a place: the conversation with your Academic Advisor is the process, and the recognition is agreed before you travel.
5 to 14
Days at the host university
10
Universities that can host you
0 €
Additional tuition. The mobility is funded by INGENIUM project funds
How it works, step by step
Five stages, from the first conversation to the entry in your academic record.
01
Scope the field
Sometimes the challenge reaches you first: a question raised by a company, a hospital, a public body or a research group connected to the alliance, circulated by INGENIUM through your university. Sometimes it starts at your end, with a field you want to work in, a laboratory whose work interests you, or a problem you have been circling around in class.
02
Take a challenge, or write your own
You can pick one of the challenges that the partner universities have prepared and placed in the shared pool. You can also draft your own, turning a broad interest into a question that can realistically be worked on in one or two weeks on site. Getting the scope right is where most first drafts need work, and the academic staff following your case will help you with it.
03
Find the host and the mentor
The contact with the partner institution is made from your own university: who will mentor you there, what the work plan looks like and which dates suit both sides. Two things get checked at this point, that the host has the capacity to receive you, and that the work fits the learning outcomes of the programme the mobility is attached to.
04
Prepare, travel, present
A short online phase before you leave, five to fourteen days at the host university with your mentor, and a closing phase where you present what you produced. Where the challenge came from an organisation outside the university, that presentation is made to the people who raised it.
05
Get it recognised
The work is recorded in your academic file through the route agreed in step three: ECTS credits as an elective or a transversal module, a digital open badge, an entry in your INGENIUM certificate, or more than one of those at once.
Where the challenges come from
Each of the ten universities feeds challenges into one shared pool, drawn from the organisations and research groups around it. That is what makes the format work across borders: the problem can come from anywhere in the alliance.
University laboratories
Research units with work in progress
Academic departments
Challenges tied to a specific course
External partners
Companies, NGOs, hospitals, public bodies
Innovation hubs
Start-ups, incubators, technology parks
The shared challenge pool
One pool for the whole alliance, so a student in Oviedo can work on a question raised in Iași, and a student in Skövde on a brief from a company in Chieti-Pescara.
Every challenge is checked for academic fit
You
You leave with a challenge that belongs to a real organisation, a mentor who knows the field, and a recognition route agreed before you travel.
What a challenge can look like
The format adapts to the discipline and to your level of study. These are the three shapes it usually takes.
A stay in a laboratory or research group, contributing to a line of work already under way. Common at Master level, and often the point where a thesis finds its data or its method.
A project with an organisation in the host university's region: a company process to improve, a service to redesign, a local plan that needs analysis. You deliver something the organisation can use.
A mix of the two, which is what most interdisciplinary challenges look like: an academic question with an external partner attached, or a practical brief that needs laboratory work behind it.
The practical side
Three things students ask before anything else.
Funding
The mobility is funded by INGENIUM project funds, which is what allows the dates and the length to be set case by case. There is no additional tuition. The INGENIUM office at your university will tell you the amount available for the current cycle.
Recognition
ECTS credits, a digital open badge, or an entry in your INGENIUM certificate. The route is agreed with your home university before you travel, so you know what the stay will be worth.
Language
Most challenges are worked in English, the working language of the alliance. Where a host needs another language, that is stated when the challenge is agreed.
Frequently Asked Questions
An exchange takes a semester or a year, follows a study agreement and puts you in courses at the host university. A Challenge-Based Mobility takes days, has no course attached and exists to work on one problem. It is funded by INGENIUM project funds, so it does not depend on the Erasmus+ mobility calendar.
In 2026/2027 Challenge-Based Mobilities are being deployed as a component of the twelve Pathway Programmes, so students admitted to a Pathway have access to them as part of their studies. If your programme does not run a Pathway, ask at the INGENIUM office at your university about the other CBMs open to you.
The contact with the host institution is made from your own university, which confirms the mentor and agrees the dates. What comes from you is the interest and, if you propose your own challenge, the first draft of the question.
Yes, and it is one of the most useful ways to use the format. The stay is arranged with a co-supervisor at the host institution, and the work feeds the thesis directly.
It depends on the challenge, on your programme and on the rules of your home university, so the number is agreed before you travel. Some students take the recognition as credits, others as a digital badge or as an entry in the INGENIUM certificate.
Challenges are real, which means some of them end without the answer anyone expected. What is assessed is your work: how you framed the problem, what you tried and what you can say at the end about why it behaved as it did.
The first mobilities of this cycle are planned for the months after the academic year starts, once the challenge pool is in place.
Get in touch
To discuss a challenge, start with the INGENIUM office at your own university, or with your Pathway Coordinator if you are already in a Pathway.
