DOCSUMSCO

 

Title

EIT Raw Materials PhD Summer School

Concept

The objective of this project is to develop a tailor made entrepreneurship PhD Summer School in raw materials. This unique entrepreneurship PhD Summer School programme is aimed at being the focal point of an ecosystem of learners consisting of students, professionals and wider society by bringing all corners of the knowledge triangle together. Its ambition is to become the reference programme in entrepreneurship in raw materials as its meets the current lack of a relevant multidisciplinary PhD educational programme that enriches raw material competencies with entrepreneurial skills. PhD students will not only be able to position their research in the whole raw materials’ value chain, but will at the same time be able to assess the economic relevance of their research, its scalability and potential for turning it into a business.The programme will be aimed at PhD students who will work in a project-based team on actual current challenges put forward by raw material experts and the industrial partners of the project. A gradual, well thought-out approach is  taken in this project. The project will consist of 3 phases:

1) The preparation phase in which technical and business challenges in the raw materials industry will be identified and discussed in-depth with experts from the partnering universities and industrial partners as well as entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from the raw materials field in order to customize the programme and finalize its structure.

2) The execution phase will be the actual run of the PhD Summer School. The PhD Summer School programme would host no more than 20 students in 2016. A concentrated approach in terms of number of participants, location, time and subject focus is taken as it is to be a learning experience for all parties involved.

3) The evaluation phase where lessons learned based on feedback from all parties involved – participants, industrial partners, teachers, mentors and organizers - is collected, processed and used to develop a programme with a long term perspective, with several locations and a diverse portfolio of subject areas in raw materials.

This proposal fits to the overall KIC EIT Raw Materials’ ambition to boost competiveness, growth and attractiveness of the European raw materials sector via radical innovation and entrepreneurship as it bridges expert knowledge in the field of raw materials and entrepreneurship and triangulates students, experts and industrial partners to deliver real value adding solutions. The programme has clear KPIs, is feasible to implement in the short term  and will achieve a direct impact - even with a limited KIC budget in 2016 - as its holds the potential to scale up from 2017 onwards with a clear ambition to increase impact, involve more partners (also from other CLCs) and interlink with other KIC initiatives.

Participants

• KU Leuven, Belgium (Coordinator)
• Université de Liège, Belgium
• Universiteit Gent, Belgium