Abstract:

Engineering education for the minerals industry is facing a changing talent landscape. With digitalization and a transition towards a decarbonized economy, a mining industry necessitates new skillsets and with technology cycles that are getting shorter and shorter, the new panorama is transmitting pressure on the need for a trained workforce, and mining companies need to ensure that their boards and staffs are properly constituted to support the transformations that the sector is currently undergoing, including fluency in such areas as technology, integration, systems security, and cybersecurity. In the raw materials sector, technology is not an end in itself. The greatest impact will come from embedding the new technologies as an integrated whole and all across the mining value chain. The “New Industrial Strategy for Europe” addresses the twin challenges of the green and the digital transformation as both will require new technologies, with investment and innovation to match. The mining industry will create new products, services, markets, and business models, new types of jobs that do not yet exist, but which will need skills that students do not yet have. The breadth and depth, the scale and speed, the nature and necessity of the twin transitions are unprecedented.

MEITIM Project, driven by a consortium of European universities, companies, and research centers, aims the development of an international MSc Program in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology Integration in Mining (MEITIM) that is oriented to shape new professionals in mining engineering with a proficiency domain in new technologies and able to develop new solutions for a competitive, environmentally responsible, and decarbonised raw materials industry.

The mining industry needs trained people, able to take advantage of the current digital and decarbonisation revolution, with the necessary creativity to imagine new solutions and the entrepreneur skills that will allow them to go ahead in setting up new ideas and solutions. The mining industry is confronted with many technological challenges along the mining production value chain, which has to be a part of the digital transformation. There is a need for innovative production solutions. This paper describes the activities developed as part of the MEITIM Project with the support of EIT Raw Materials, one of the eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) initiated by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology), funded by the European Commission, and whose mission is to help boost the competitiveness, growth, and attractiveness of the European raw materials sector through radical innovation and guided entrepreneurship. In this paper, the MEITIM conception and innovations are described, to show how three leading European Universities, with the help of companies, research centers, and EIT Raw Materials are shaping the way to help students to acquire and develop skills and knowledge addressed to this competitive environment, and become part of the highly-skilled workforce that the mining industry will require.

Keywords:

Innovation, Program development, Engineering studies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship skills, Industry 4.0, Digitalisation.