
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Thessaly (DECE), specifically the Creative Technologies Learning Lab (http://ctll.e-ce.uth.gr ) research group, organised an educational activity for high school students to encourage innovation skills for sustainability. The action took place on January 15, 2025, at the computer lab of ECE. The action was carried out at the initiative of the school’s Head Master, Ms. Evangelia Balamoti. About 30 students from the school participated, accompanied by professors Ms. Lambrini Giannakou and Ms. Vena Vaitsi.

Students became familiar with the UN Sustainability Goals. They worked in teams to analyse complex sustainability challenges of our time, such as plastic pollution, responsible water management and tackling waste, protecting forests and biodiversity, encouraging recycling, and more. Students applied design thinking, a deep human-centred methodology of synthesising solutions to complex challenges of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, through processes of investigation, ideation, and prototype design.

The action occurred within the framework of the research project eDea (http://eDea-project.gr ), funded by the Research—Create—Innovate Greece 2.0 program. The project aims to design digital services and content to promote innovation. It will be implemented from 2021 to 2025 with the participation of the University of Thessaly, the University of the Aegean, and the companies Design4Future and Butlair.