Progress college VERBUND.NRW

 

Since October 2016, the VERBUND.NRW progress college has brought together young scientists from RWTH Aachen University and Münster University of Applied Sciences from the fields of technology, ecology, business administration and sociology. In an interdisciplinary network, they are investigating the entire value chain of development/production, construction/processing, use/disposal, deconstruction/recycling of composite materials and structures in the construction sector.

In a total of 11 projects, the Progress College Verbund.NRW is concerned with all areas along the value chain of relevant composite materials or structures:

• Production and development
• Construction and processing
• Use and deconstruction
• Recycling and disposal

The cooperation of various scientific disciplines, i.e. the interdisciplinary collaboration of scientists at the technological, ecological, social and economic levels, plays a decisive role. Likewise, the players from industry, associations and authorities affected by the problems are involved in the project from the outset, in order to take account of the requirements from practice within the framework of a transdisciplinary research approach.

Verbund.NRW has set itself the goal of meeting the societal challenges of climate protection, increasing resource efficiency and raw material recovery, and making a decisive contribution to sustainable development and resource-efficient use of these innovative materials.

The college is being funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as one of twelve colleges for an initial period of four and a half years until the end of 2020 as part of the Progress NRW research strategy.

Further information on this topic can be found here.