Based on the success of the first Winter School of the education project SusCritMat (Sus-tainable Management of Critical Raw Materials) in January 2018, the project now an-nounced that a second workshop is to take place in October 2018. The so-called Sus-CritMat Autumn School for Professionals offers a program that is specifically targeted to industry representatives in order to interdisciplinary discuss the sustainable management of critical materials with scientists and experts from various areas. Through real-life-oriented presentations, discussion panels and exercises, the participants will be able to expand their expertise and gain valuable insights for the use of critical raw materials in their company.

The project was initially launched with the pilot workshop, the Winter School, with 32 participants from 12 countries, mainly with a scientific background. The new, interdisci-plinary education concept enables the participants to evaluate critical raw materials according to different aspects, among them life cycle aspects, material flow, ecological and social aspects, resource efficiency, policies, certification and standards as well as price development and recycling. By using a sample product out of real life, the partici-pants identified the critical raw materials involved. They used this knowledge to then determine the connected risks and to develop specific strategies how to take the above mentioned aspects into account and to minimize risks.

With the second workshop of the series, the SusCritMat Autumn School for Profes-sionals from October 24th – 26th, 2018 at TU Delft, The Netherlands, SusCritMat now offers a workshop specifically tailored to the needs of industry representatives with a good mix of theory and hands-on exercises. The aim of the workshop is to enable the participants to apply the newly gained knowledge immediately in their daily work. Effi-cient resource management is not only a means to save costs, but it also helps to reduce risks.

Registration is now open at https://suscritmat.eu/autumn-school-2018/.

SusCritMat aims to educate people from Master’s student level up, both in industry and academia about important aspects of Sustainable critical raw materials. In a novel con-cept, it introduces courses on these complex and interdisciplinary topics in a modular structure, adaptable to a variety of different formats and accessible to both students and managers in industry. SusCritMat is an EU-funded project that brings together the tech-nical and pedagogical expertise of leading educational institutions and business partners. The Fraunhofer-Project Group for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategy IWKS is one of the partners supporting the project and develops the general didactic concept.
 
Please find more information on SusCritMat on the project‘s website or in the preliminary program attached. The full report on the Winter School is available here.