The EIT-labelled (http://www.master-suma.eu/master-courses/eit-label/ ) Master Programme on Sustainable Materials (SUMA) welcomed 24 enthusiastic students in September 2018. This third cohort is the biggest cohort for SUMA so far, with selected candidates coming from all over the world. The SUMA master programmes aim to train students to become the entrepreneurs boosting the circular economy of tomorrow, challenging them to face the most recent evolutions in sustainable materials, recycling and circular economy. (Piet Wostyn & Katarzyna Janusz, Leuven, 22.11.2018).
Brazilian student Celina motivated her choice for SUMA: “Sustainability has always attracted me for its urgent and interesting challenges, and for pushing us to think about our impacts in the present and future. I believe sustainability can help the industry to improve and reach their objectives in many ways. Therefore, I want to become an expert in the field of sustainable materials management in order to influence the materials production and processing industry. I believe SUMA will offer me this as it is strongly linked to industry.”
To strengthen the visibility of SUMA and to attract even more excellent students in the future, a promotional video about the SUMA programmes was shot on various premises on Arenberg Campus of KU Leuven. The camera crew followed one student, René, during one full day and filmed his classes, lab sessions, and social interactions with classmates. For René it was quite unique: “I never had a camera crew filming me the whole day and interviewing me, but it was a nice experience! I am happy to share a day in the life of a SUMA student. For me, SUMA is the perfect programme, as it combines sustainable engineering with courses on entrepreneurship and innovation. And puts it all into practice with the master thesis and internship. This attracted me a lot.”
The SUMA master programmes consists of a solid backbone of technical courses broadly covering aspect of materials and processing, sustainability and recycling, circular (eco) design and life cycle engineering, materials substitution, manufacturing (60 ECTS). This is integrated with courses on entrepreneurship and innovation (30 ECTS), internship (6 ECTS), and master thesis (24 ECTS). The thesis and internship can be based in an industrial company or a research institute strongly related to sustainable and raw materials.
In September 2018, the second SUMA summer school took place in Leuven (10-12/09) gathering students from the various SUMA-master programmes and interested researchers to discuss the question “To mine or not to mine – A multi-criteria assessment of the landfill mining of municipal and industrial solid waste deposits.” Read the short report here.
SUMA offers 10 possible tracks, spread over 5 different partner universities: KU Leuven, University of Milano-Bicocca, University of Trento, Grenoble Institute of Technology and University of Leoben. Students interested in the SUMA master programmes are invited to apply online on: http://www.master-suma.eu. SUMA is also active on Twitter: @master_suma https://twitter.com/master_suma
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EIT Label The SUMA programmes have been awarded the EIT-label, fostering students to become more creative, innovative and entrepreneurs. This label is a quality label which validates the highly integrated, innovative ‘learning-by-doing’ curricula, combined with the robust entrepreneurship education. The label acknowledges that the SUMA programmes build on the EIT overarching learning outcomes, that they offer students a mobility opportunities, the European dimension and openness to the world. Finally, thanks to this EIT Label, students are entitled to a student enhancement allowance. Partners are: KU Leuven (coordinator), University of Milano Bicocca, Grenoble INP, University of Trento, Montanuniversität Leoben, TU Bergakademie Freiberg and Umicore.
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