15 May 2020 | In June 2019, the six EuroTech presidents decided to explore new scientific focus areas. The Alliance wants to use the potential of two new partners as well as opportunities offered by external funds to its advantage and take on a pioneering role in the European context. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is one of these new focus areas and the collaboration has started with a first exploratory workshop at Technical University Munich (TUM).
Thanks to its small energy and resource footprints, additive manufacturing can contribute significantly to achieving declared climate goals. Furthermore, additive manufacturing’s highly digitizable processes promise to bring production capacity back to Europe, and with that, jobs for highly qualified personnel. That is the reason why AM got into the focus of the EuroTech Alliance.
First workshop at TUM to kick off collaboration
Fifteen representatives of the EuroTech universities came together on TUM’s campus in Garching near Munich for a two-day workshop this February to exchange research expertise within the field. The researchers identified great complementarity in their work and unanimously agreed on intensifying the collaboration.
For the future, different ways of cooperation are envisioned, such as joint research projects, a joint conference to discuss subfields and challenges of AM, and joint summer schools. Cooperation with industrial partners is also likely, as all EuroTech universities are key players in their respective innovation eco-systems.
Our goal: jointly addressing this important topic
TUM is chairing the new focus areas of Additive Manufacturing, which fits perfectly TUM’s agenda.Additive and the newly founded research alliance Bavarian Additive Manufacturing Cluster with our partners Oerlikon, GE Additive and Linde.
“This was a very productive first meeting and promises intensive collaboration in the future to jointly address this topic, which is so important for Europe” said Valerie Schegk. The TUM Brussels Liaison Officer attended the workshop to inform the group of EU-funding instruments and on newest developments in the European Commission.
