Successful project meeting in Cambridge, Programme Winter School 2018 ready

Education Project SusCritMat

Professor Mike Ashby, co-founder of Granta Design, welcoming the SusCritMat Consortium to Granta Design in Cambridge.
Professor Mike Ashby, co-founder of Granta Design, welcoming the SusCritMat Consortium to Granta Design in Cambridge.
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Raw materials are crucial to Europe’s economy and essential to maintaining and improving our quality of life. Securing reliable and unhindered access to important primary and secondary raw materials is a growing concern within the EU and across the globe. The SusCritMat project, funded by the EIT Raw Materials, aims to provide education material on this important topic to give Industry Professionals and those at Universities and Research organizations the skills and knowledge necessary to optimise our use of resources. On May 19, 2017, the SusCritMat partners met at the Headquarters of Granta Design in Cambridge, UK. The meeting was the second project meeting after SusCritMat’s Kick-Off in December 2016. It was held to finalise the programme for the project’s first winter school on Sustainable Management of Critical Raw Materials, to discuss the progress of the Consortium’s work since the official project start in April, and develop the work plan for the coming months. An important milestone of the SusCritMat project, its first winter school, will take place from January 15 to 19, 2018, in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, and will be organized by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in collaboration with ESM Foundation. The school will be aimed at PhD students and early researchers. It will be not only an opportunity to learn about many aspects of Critical Raw Materials including Life Cycle Approaches and Circular Economy in a novel concept, but also the chance to meet and discuss these topics with leading European experts in the field.


The winter school will target graduate students with different scientific, design and business-related backgrounds and will cover a variety of aspects regarding critical raw materials.

 

Day One

  • Criticality – what is it?
  • Product design and its history
  • Resource efficiency concept

Days Two and Three

  • Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies
  • Sustainability assessment
  • Environmental and social aspects of raw materials production
  • Policy and governance issues

Day Four

  • Practical methods for sustainable product design and materials selection.

Day Five (optional)

  • Presentation and assessment of project work by a panel of experts.

Electric cars with neodymium permanent magnets will be used as a recurring example to give structure to the course and real practical cases will deepen the students’ understanding. The winter school will also require interactive project work, with mentoring support of an expert in the field. Students aiming for ECTS accreditation will be assigned cases in advance and be asked to prepare. They will work in small groups on their cases throughout the week and present the outcome on the last day to the expert panel. To facilitate this, students will have the opportunity to connect via a Facebook group prior to the winter school. You find the detailed programme of the winter school here. Les Diablerets offers a large variety of possible activities such as skiing, snow hiking, or visiting the nearby glacier. To provide participants the opportunity to exchange and enjoy the area, courses will take place in the morning and evening, with time in the afternoon for either group work or teambuilding outdoor activities. Since the winter school is a pilot event, there are no participation fees apart from fixed costs for rooms and meals.Accommodation fees for students will be co-funded by the Consortium to make the winter school affordable to everybody. The SusCritMat expert panel will decide on the acceptance of candidates in November 2017 after their application with a CV and letter of motivation. Learn more about Critical Raw Materials and the first SusCritMat winter school in the SusCritMat webinar in October 2018 (to be soon announced on http://www.suscritmat.eu).