EUropean CERamic MATerials

The European Ceramic Materials (EUCERMAT) project presents a three years programme aiming at creating blended mobility in Europe for students involved in a strategic partnership programme. Such programme implies a network of industrials functioning in close synergy with four universities (Universities of Darmstadt in Deutschland, Limerick in Ireland, Aveiro in Portugal and Limoges in France) and one Italian research institute (ISTEC). During this programme, the industrial network will be created by selecting very active partners having a particular interest for the innovation in the field of ceramics having a high added value or in the field of original processing of ceramics. This intensive partnership will be developed both in the fields of research and teaching. The communication and the dissemination events of the programme will be organized by the European Ceramics Society which constitutes the sixth partner of the project. This programme aims at contributing to change the common opinion about ceramics materials in Europe. Indeed, for a long time, ceramic materials were simply associated to great diffusion materials mainly employed as building materials (covering plates factories, glasses for windows... etc.). As a consequence, one of the main problems for recruiting students in the field of Ceramic Materials trainings is principally due to this erroneous image, now perceived as negative. One way to change it, at least in Europe, will be to train a new generation of students who will further become high-level researchers and industrials. As a consequence, these people will then participate at transforming the negative viewpoint into a positive opinion, by emerging new projects which will contribute to the evolution of society through the integration of Advanced Materials in completely new applications. In addition, these high-level graduate people may be actors either by creating start up with finalized applications or by occupying high-level functions in industrial groups to develop ceramic materials integrated in innovating technologies. Another objective of the programme is to develop modern ways of teaching more adapted to the international cooperation between academic institutions. A blended mobility teaching programme will be implemented through virtual classes via the moodle platform in order to offer international courses that will be coupled to very unique teaching practical labs, closely connect to research and performed on instrumental platforms of laboratories associated to the different universities or research institutes. The second objective of the programme concerns the implementation of tutored projects for students. The subjects will be of industrial interest but defined in cooperation with the academics of the universities and searchers. The subjects will be prospective and challenging, corresponding to up-stream research so that a strong connexion with the research laboratories could be relevant. The second and third year of the programme, between 12 and 16 students of excellence will be selected from the 4 involved universities to participate to the European programme through integration week, blended mobility, tutored projects and summer schools. Finally, the network of industrials could reflect on the deposal of a subsequent Knowledge Alliance programme, that could constitute the base for even further and more ambitious discussions on how to "prepare a roadmap of emerging industry requirements in ceramics science" that could be continued through a subsequent knowledge alliances programme. These requirements could conclude that developing a Joint master's programme to train students in the specific skills needed is desirable. The three years of the strategic partnership program will also allow defining t