discovered_01_2016

WWW.HZDR.DE 22 23 RESEARCH // THE HZDR RESEARCH MAGAZINE scale: "When it comes to upscaling, that means projecting our findings onto industrial scale, we hope to get help from our NetFlot partners," the processing engineer says. Martin Rudolph is convinced that a pan-European effort is the only way to achieve a comprehensive strategy. Europe’s New Resource Network In late 2014, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) tasked a consortium with establishing a Knowledge and Innovation Community, KIC, for the European raw materials sector. The network, called EIT RawMaterials, currently pools the skills of about 100 partners from 19 European countries, who collaborate to find solutions for a sustainable supply of natural resources. The network supports businesses and researchers in bringing novel products and technologies to market faster, while at the same time encouraging young entrepreneurs. Their goal is to make Europe’s raw materials sector more competitive internationally and more appealing to innovative businesses and excellent researchers. Founded in 2015 and coordinated by HZDR and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the world’s largest raw materials alliance spent most of its first year building its organizational structure. Since the beginning of 2016, EIT RawMaterials GmbH has been an independent corporation. Jens Gutzmer, director at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology and interim CEO until the summer of 2015, passed the torch to the new CEO Dr. Ernst Lutz. In addition, all leadership positions in central management and the six co-location centers were filled. The purpose of these regional centers is to thematically organize the regional efforts of EIT RawMaterials, which is headquartered in Berlin. In its first year, EIT RawMaterials defined several support programs to enable its partners to implement technologies in practice, or to network their infrastructures such as labs and equipment. In addition, it has created a transparent assessment procedure to evaluate new project proposals according to strict criteria – such as developing a market-ready recycling process – as well as to monitor ongoing projects. This process is designed to ensure that only the best technologies or products will receive funding. By 2018, EIT RawMaterials plans to be involved in the launch of at least 16 start-ups. By 2022, more than 10,000 new jobs in the raw materials sector will have been created and about 8,000 entrepreneurs will have received certified training. _TS www.eitrawmaterials.eu WWW.HZDR.DE 22 23 OVERSPILL: Experiment in a flotation cell. Photo: Detlev Müller CONTACT _Institute of Resource Ecology at HZDR Dr. Johanna Lippmann-Pipke | Dr. Heike Hildebrand netflot@hzdr.de _Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology at HZDR Dr. Martin Rudolph m.rudolph@hzdr.de _Institute of Fluid Dynamics at HZDR Prof. Uwe Hampel u.hampel@hzdr.de www.net-flot.eu

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