The Erasmus Mundus Master's Programme in Industrial Ecology is a two-year programme with 120 ECTS, offering a unique industrial ecology education for 15 Third-country (4,000 Euro participation costs per semester) and 10 EU students (2,000 Euro participation costs per semester) per edition. Those 25 students can study at two or three universities of the MIND consortium - representing seven universities - that consists of:
- University of Graz/Austria (co-ordinator)
- Asian Institute of Technology (Pathumthani/Thailand)
- Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg/Sweden)
- Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands)
- Rochester Institute of Technology (U.S./New York State)
- University Leiden (The Netherlands)
- Waseda University (Tokyo/Japan)
All these universities gained internationally acknowledged industrial ecology expertise in teaching and research. Industrial ecology is an emerging interdisciplinary field combining natural, technical and social sciences in a systems view at scale levels from the global to the local. Its core concept is the analogy between processes in nature (biosphere) and processes in society (techno-sphere). Evolution has resulted in a highly efficient use of materials and energy in biosphere systems: waste from one process is a resource for another. In today's society, resources are exploited, producing unusable waste streams and release of pollutants to soil, water, and air, leading to complex sustainability problems. Society might take lessons from the biosphere to solve these problems.
Therefore, MIND is in the heart of the EU needs of the "Europe 2020 strategy", because due to the current sustainability problems and imminent EU and global transitions in energy systems, food systems etc. there is a great need for industrial ecology trained persons that have a grasp of the complexities of the field of sustainable development. The MIND programme combines the expertise and experience of prominent groups in the area of Industrial ecology research, within and outside the EU. MIND will be the first international master programme in industrial ecology worldwide, offering
a joint degree (from Austrian and Swedish partners) and/or a double degree (from Dutch partners plus one or both of the other two EU partners)
Moreinfo: http://www.emmind.eu
