Building Training Programmes for Young Professionals in the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Field

Fuel Cells and Hydrogen remain new topics to European professionals’ training agenda(s), despite considerable progress in the integration of these subjects into, for instance, university curricula. Especially those professions with less of a basic materials and process engineering orientation will suffer from a lack of information during their academic or vocational training courses (i.e. manufacturing, component & systems design, etc.). This fact constitutes a major problem for the up-starting European companies in fuel cell and hydrogen business, since the availability of candidates with a FC&H background is low and the basic training of employees has to be provided internally.
The project contributes to tackling this training deficit by devising a system of vocational education and training (VET) for post-graduate engineers and scientists, either at a PhD level of education or already employed by a company. Based on an evaluation of current activities, including the many summer schools and short courses already being offered in Europe, a curriculum concept will be developed that offers a system of courses and distance teaching that can be attended in parallel to other studies or professional work. Elements of this concept are to be tested and evaluated. Two groupings of stakeholders (academic institutions as cooperation partners and industry as end user) will be involved in order to gain broad acceptance of the programme developed across the variety of European education systems.

Topic:

SP1-JTI-FCH.2009.5.1: Development of educational programmes

Coordinator:

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Contact:

Dr Robert STEINBERGER-WILCKENS

Other participating organisations: