From 17th to 20th September, the first training school organized by CONTEXT, the network of European experts in advanced textile materials, took place in Rethymno (Crete, Greece).

Students included 16 professionals from 11 European countries with different profiles like researchers at universities, at technological centres and at companies, related to the textile sector or to their final applications in building&living and in the personal protective equipment sector.

Lecturers of the training school were Dr. Ariadna Detrell, Cluster Manager of AEI Tèxtils; Dr. Georgios Priniotakis, Head of the Textile Engineering Department at University of West Attica (Greece); Dr. Dominique Adolphe, Professor at the University of Haute-Alsace (France) and Dr. Daniela Zavec, Director of Titera and expert in Smart textiles (Slovenia).

In addition to the lectures, participants visited to three research centres located in Crete: Center of Materials Technology & Photonic, Institute of Electronic Structure and Lasers Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas and Institute of Plasma Physics & Lasers, all three at the Hellenic Mediterranean University.

On the last day, a Hackathon was organized, in which participants worked on three cases related to the application of advanced textile materials in the building&living sector; solutions using Smart textiles to improve well-being and safety in the workplace and the creation of a start-up for the commercialization of a new innovative textile product. The aim of these training schools is to enable attendees to share points of view, to discuss topics related to the thematic and generate ideas that could/should be transformed into research & development projects.

CONTEXT 1st Training School

CONTEXT’s next activity  is the conference and meeting of Working Group 4: textiles in building&living, in Frankfurt on 15th and 16th October, jointly organized with the European Textile Technology Platform and German associations IVGT and Textile+Mode.