Large solar heating systems are decisive to cover a major part of European low temperature heat demand by solar energy and therewith to meet European policy aims. However, today only a negligible share of solar heating systems installed in Europe are large units due to manifold technical and socio-economic obstacles. The challenge of solar thermal technology and the overall objective of the proposed initial training network is to supply heat in larger solar heating systems for applications like industrial processes, to feed-in into district heating networks, or sorption drying and cooling. The obstacles will be approached with an innovative inter-disciplinary consortium, including 13 PhD students. Six universities and five private sector participants from six different European countries will provide research and training in cooperation with four associated partners from the private sector. The SHINE project will cover detailed new experimental material-, component- and system studies, system integration analysis and numerical optimization, as well as chemical investigations on storage materials. A close cooperation with industry will ensure fast exploitation of the results. With the SHINE network, the critical mass of PhD students will be gathered on a European level to offer a specialized and structured PhD course programme of large solar heating systems. After the end of SHINE, the key course modules will be offered as a standard curriculum of European PhD education in solar thermal in the long term.The SHINE students will face excellent job perspectives, they will have a sound background in energy economics and complementary skills, regarded as important skills to reach a break through of solar thermal technology.