A successful case of Networking
The
collaboration between SELECT and EPPEI
Living the
Innoenergy experience means that soon or later, you must face
"networking". This word will be told you with the solemn tone of a
religious commandment, with the gravity of a fundamental law. The principle
states that every situation is good for introducing yourself, for connecting
with other people and catching opportunities. Even though it may be perceived
as an unnatural effort in the beginning, it is the perfect approach to tackle
the big challenges in front of us.
I understood this
more clearly recently, having had the opportunity to collaborate for a project,
with a South African university, together with my group mates from SELECT.
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| Meeting at North West University, one of the partner institutes of EPPEI, with Prof Stuart Piketh |
Everything started during the
SELECT Spring Seminar, last May in Eindhoven. One of the presentations was held
by Prof. Louis Jestin, the creator and director of Eskom Power Plant
Engineering Institute (EPPEI). One step back: Eskom is the main electricity
public utility of South Africa. Within this company, five years ago, EPPEI was
launched, a master program that connects the 8 most important technical
universities of the country, with the purpose of creating skilled power engineers
that will solve, in a medium-term perspective, the challenges of the national
electrical infrastructure: grid robustness, environmental impact, asset
renovation, start-up of renewables and many others. Does this sound familiar to
you?
Innoenergy and EPPEI happen to be
very similar in the trust put in education, but they are somehow complementary
in the means to achieve the objective: while we constantly look for the “game
changing” idea (our second holy commandment), our South African friends are
focused on the creation of dexterous engineers, masters of power plants, and
reliable choice makers. The match between the two entities comes natural, and
this is why Louis Jestin was giving a very animated presentation in Eindhoven
last May, foreseeing the chance of a fruitful collaboration.
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| The group (almost) complete at NWU |
Thanks to Davide Liviero’s incredible
networking skills (he will kill me for this), we got in contact with Louis and
we decided to get involved in one of the Eskom-EPPEI projects, that became our “integrated
Project of the Year” (one of the curricular courses of SELECT). We focused on
the Eskom offset plan, that aims to improve standards of living in the poorest settlements
of the country, while reducing air pollution, mainly due to domestic coal
burning. But I will not spoil any further. In the next post I will reveal more
about this project, for which I have a particular enthusiasm. I would just like
to thank Innoenergy for funding the flights of our trip to South Africa, and EPPEI
professors, staff and students of course, for being so welcoming towards us.
Because it was not only about the knowledge we got, but also about the
inspiring people we met: professionals with a vision of the goal and a clear
idea of the ways to reach it.
Two SELECT students remained in
South Africa and they are already writing their thesis in Stellenbosch in this
moment. We hope that this collaboration will be fueled by new projects and new
exchanges soon, and to see South African students next year, sitting in KTH or
UPC classes. Because we believe in the value of networking. We called it
community, it echoed ubuntu.
