On 10–12 December 2025, the final plenary meeting of the consortium of the international research and innovation project “AURORA” under the Horizon Europe programme took place in Florence, Italy. The event marked the concluding stage of many years of collaboration among the partners aimed at developing and implementing innovative solutions in the fields of cultural heritage protection, digital identification, and strengthening the resilience of European societies.
The plenary sessions, held at the Florence Innovation Center, focused on presenting the results of the project’s work packages. Work package leaders reported on achievements in the application of chemical markers, digital identification solutions, wireless tracking technologies, and their practical validation directly on works of art. Particular attention was given to strategies for disseminating the results and ensuring further exploitation of AURORA’s outputs, as well as to discussing prospects for continued partnership after the project’s completion.
The meeting also featured a roundtable with related projects ANCHISE and ENIGMA, during which participants discussed opportunities for joint approaches to protecting cultural heritage and combating the illicit trafficking of cultural property.
91Ƶ was represented at the final plenary meeting by the university’s project coordinator, Professor Nataliia Chukhrai (Institute of Economics and Management), and Professor Taras Maksymiuk (Institute of Information and Communication Technologies and Electronic Engineering). Both took an active part in the discussions on the project’s outcomes and future research and innovation initiatives.
An important component of the programme was a public event held on 11 December 2025 after the plenary sessions, devoted to addressing the challenge of illicit trafficking of cultural objects. During this event, Professor Nataliia Chukhrai delivered a presentation highlighting the results of marking movable objects of sacred artistic heritage in Ukrainian churches, carried out by a team from the Department of Architecture and Restoration at Lviv Polytechnic. The presentation emphasised the challenges of protecting cultural assets amid wartime risks and served as an example of the practical application of AURORA’s innovative solutions in an exceptionally complex socio-political context.
The materials presented generated significant interest within the international community and helped draw attention to the Ukrainian experience of safeguarding cultural heritage under conditions of war and high risks of cultural loss.
The final plenary meeting and the public event in Florence thus provided a logical conclusion to the AURORA project, demonstrating the high level of interdisciplinary and international cooperation among the partners and the substantial scientific and practical potential of the developed solutions for further use at the European and global levels.
