The European network of experts on advanced textile materials, CONTEXT, has closed its second grant period.
The second grant period started on 1st May 2019 and lasted one year. This included the following activities:
- On 15th May, some CONTEXT members met during the TECHTEXTIL and TEXPROCESS trade fair in Frankfurt. The group visited the Smart Textiles Micro-Factory by the Institute for Textile Technology (ITA) from the RWTH Aachen University. Later on, after a meeting to discuss about next activities of the network, the participants visited the Digital Textile Micro-Factory by DITF – Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung Denkendorf.
- From 17th to 20th September’19, the first CONTEXT training school was organized in Rethymno (Crete, Greece). It was dedicated especially to textile materials in building&living and in personal protective equipment. Students included 16 professionals from 11 European countries with different profiles.
- 3 calls for STSMs – Short Term Scientific Missions were launched. STSMs are institutional visits aimed at supporting individual mobility, fostering collaboration between individuals and are primarily addressed to PhD students or postdoctoral fellows. 12 grants were awarded. Due to the Coronavirus crisis only 7 of them were completed.
- 2 calls for Conference Grants were launched. These grants aimed at supporting PhD students and Early Career Investigators to participate at international science and technology related conferences. 1 grant was awarded.
- WG4, together with the Textile ETP (European Textile Technology platform), IVGT (German Technical Textile Association) and FKT (German Textile Research Council) organized an International Seminar on Advanced and Smart Textiles in Architecture, Building & Living Environments (15th and 16th October’19 in Frankfurt, Germany). During the event, a workshop was held.
- On 21st November’19, EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, hosted the WG1 (Textiles for healthcare and medicine) meeting.
- WG5 organized a meeting during the Recent Progress Symposium on Textile Technology and Chemistry, from 20th to 22nd November’19 in Bursa, Turkey.
- On 30th January’20 CONTEXT Management Committee met in Ljubljana. The day before, the 6 working groups of the network held their meetings. The meetings were hosted by the University of Ljubljana and organized by the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering.
- CONTEXT has been disseminated in two international events: in a workshop dedicated to technical textiles within the international conference TexTech (24th – 25th November in Bucharest, Romania) and at the ITMC – International Conference on Intelligent Textiles & Mass Customisation (from 13th to 15th November in Marrakech, Morocco).
Unfortunately, last activity planned in the period was cancelled. It was the conference Inmotion2020, originally scheduled in Weimar (Germany) from 27th to 29th April. The event has been postponed to April next year.
CONTEXT currently involves more than 250 experts from 34 countries in Europe and 4 international. The network is open to all professionals in the field of research, companies, clusters and end users, who can participate in the different activities organized.
The CONTEXT Management Committee has already approved the Work and Budget Plan for the third grant period from 1st May’20 to 30th April’21, including working group meetings, a training school, calls for grants, etc.