The SUT team with a win in the international STEM Innovation Contest!
A team of students from the Silesian University of Technology has won the international STEM Innovation Contest, organized within the EURECA-PRO consortium. The winning team is made up of representatives of the Faculty of Materials Engineering. Their project concerns the creation of a structural functional material using waste from inorganic chemistry production.
The "NewCycle" team consists of Klaudia Tomaszewska, Kaja Orzechowska, Aleksander Peryt and Krzysztof Stępień. The students worked under the guidance of mentors Tomasz Pawlik PhD, and Jakub Smoleń M.Sc.
The final was held in Germany at the University of Applied Sciences of Mittweida. Three teams entered the international stage: from our University, from Spain (Universidad de León) and from Romania (Universitatea din Petroșani). By the decision of the five-member jury, the team from the Silesian University of Technology won outright.
The goal of the STEM Innovation Contest - EURECA-PRO (eurecapro.eu) within EURECA-PRO is to engage students in developing creative projects that solve real-world problems in collaboration with STEM ("Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics") related industries. The competition was aimed at undergraduate and graduate students from EURECA-PRO partner universities. It is designed to promote invention and problem-solving skills through collaborative student work with the support of multidisciplinary STEM scientists acting as mentors.
The winning project concerns the creation of a structural functional material using waste from inorganic chemistry production.
- The solution proposed by our team is polymer concrete with the addition of difficult-to-recycle waste (car glass and glass-fibre-reinforced polymer composites). Currently, most of this type of waste is landfilled, which we believe is a waste of useful materials and a neglect of the environment. We want to prove that with the use of these wastes it is possible to create a structural functional material that competes with classic concretes, and bring about a situation where landfilling or incineration of waste of this type will be uneconomical for businesses. In addition to the use of waste, our method has a lower carbon footprint," Alexander Peryt explained.
He added that the material group of polymer concretes itself is characterized by quite favourable characteristics, which mean that manufacturing a range of products from them can be more beneficial than using classical concretes.
In the picture there is our winning group (students with mentors) and the Vice-Rector for Education at the University of Mittweida, Prof. Volker Tolkmitt, who presented the awards.
Congratulations!
