Last week, the results of the 2016 call for proposals of the European Institute of Technology Raw Materials (EIT RM) became available. Both Leiden University and Delft Unversity of Technology are partners in this Knowledge and Innovation Community, in which some 100 research institutes, industries and universities in Europe participate.
With 6 of the 8 proposals in which they participated awarded, Leiden University's Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) enjoyed a massive success. With a similar score by TU Delft, the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Sustainability (CfS) in which these two universities collaborate, will start with some 1 million Euro in EIT RM projects per 1 January 2017.
This really is an excellent achievement, says David Peck of Delft University of Technology, who coordinates the relations of the Centre for Sustainability with the EIT Raw Materials. We probably did over 2 times better than average.
The projects further form a well balanced portfolio, says Arnold Tukker, Chair of the Executive Board of the Centre for Sustainability and Scientific director of CML. There are some projects which support education and will create new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Other projects will develop new indicators for resource scarcity, and easy to use interfaces that help making easily accessible analyses with detailed material flow and input-output databases that we already have developed. The challenge is now to find well-qualified postdocs and PhDs for these jobs, since there is no way we can handle these new projects with existing staff.