The EuroTeQ Engineering University is one of the 41 European university alliances funded by the European Commission. It consists of six partners and is coordinated by TUM. One of the core initiatives within EuroTeQ is the so-called Collider, a challenge-based competition that runs for several weeks. The program encourages mixed teams of students and trainees to tackle globally challenging topics and work together on innovative projects. The overall theme of this year's Collider was Leave no waste behind. The big, EuroTeQ-wide finale of the competition is the EuroTeQaThon, which is held in tandem at three partner universities each.
The EuroTeQ roadmap: Collider, EuroTeQaThon, Brussels
The Advan.ce team from TUM won in the Consumption category with their idea for more sustainable recycling of nuclear waste from medical machines. On June 20, the students traveled to Brussels together with their winning fellow students from TU/e in Eindhoven, who prevailed in the cities category, and the winning team from TalTech, which came out on top in the energy category, to present their idea to a broader public and receive their prize.
In addition to the official award ceremony in front of an audience of around 120 people from the Brussels political and research community, the students also had other appointments in the European capital. For example, they visited the European Parliament and met with a French parliamentarian there, and also discussed their strategy for a more sustainable future with representatives of Brussels-Energy, a waste management service.
EuroTeQ as best practice example for the European Commission
The best practices EuroTeQ has created during the past months have not gone unnoticed. Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth has invited TUM to share some of these best practices during the fifth Education and Innovation Summit in Brussels on June 23. Gerhard Müller, Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at TUM, joined the Commissioner in a round table opening the summit. Gerhard Müller underlined what the EuroTeQ consortium ultimately wants to achieve: “We need to prepare our students for human-centered engineering rather than for product-centered engineering.”
One of the next steps the EuroTeQ community can take in this direction is the second round of the EuroTeQ Collider. Preparations for the new challenges in the winter semester 2022/23 are already in full swing.
If you are interested in the activities of the EuroTeQ Engineering University, please contact TUM Brussels liaison officer Maria-Valerie Schegk or the EuroTeQ project manager at TUM Carla Albrecht-Hengerer.
More about the EuroTeQ Engineering University
First EuroTeQ Collider completed