MONTANUNIVERSITAET LEOBEN

MONTANUNIVERSITAET LEOBEN

MONTANUNIVERSITAET LEOBEN

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PARTNER DESCRIPTION
Montanuniversitaet Leoben is a technical university dedicated to unique core disciplines aiming at establishing sustainability in its value-added cycle, that starts from the production and processing of raw materials to finished products made of high-performance materials, on to the disposal of the product and its recycling and reuse as secondary raw material.

Currently, the MUL is home to about 3,800 students, of which 14% are foreign students. In 2018, the university employed 929 academic staff members that provide excellent training opportunities in 11 bachelor´s and 14 master´s programs. Additionally, MUL awarded 72 PhD degrees in 2018, of which more than 20% went to international young researchers. The university’s commitment to research excellence is reflected by a widely branching, multi-disciplinary network of institutions and competence centers that perform applied research in close contact to industry and businesses. Concurrently, fundamental research questions are answered in the framework of manifold national and European projects together with renowned international research institutions and companies.

The Department of Polymer Engineering and Science, which will be mainly involved in PolyFlip, consists of six institutes, covering, similar to MUL in general, the value-added cycle of polymeric products starting from the molecule over materials science on to designing and processing of plastics and composites. About 85 full time employees are working in this department, supplemented by a considerable number of students working part time. Currently, there are about 180 students enroled in the study program of Polymer Engineering and Science.

ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCE OF THE ORGANISATION IN THE AREAS RELEVANT FOR THIS PROJECT

The Department of Polymer Engineering and Science is looking back on 50 years of successful research and education in its specific field, thus bringing in a lot of experience in the requirements of the graduates to be successful in industry, as well as a wide network of research partners in industry and academia worldwide. As the study program is still relatively small compared to other mass studies, there is a high flexibility to implement new pedagogic elements in our teaching activities.

KEY PERSONS INVOLVED IN THIS PROJECT

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Prof. Thomas Lucyshyn
Prof. Thomas Lucyshyn from the Institute of Polymer Processing at MUL is an associate professor for polymer processing and brings in his technical knowledge on the subject as well as a long-term teaching experience at various institutions. At his home institution MUL he has been teaching lectures, calculation and lab exercises, a computer simulation lab and seminars for bachelor, master and PhD students since 2000. So far, he was (co)supervising more than 55 academic theses (BSc, MSc and PhD). He has also been a regular guest lecturer at the project partner FTPO since 2014, where he spent 6 months in 2014/15. Additionally, he spent 3 weeks as a guest lecturer at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi in 2007. Furthermore, Prof. Lucyshyn has been an active member of the curriculum commission of the study program Polymer Engineering and Science at MUL for many years contributing to the development of the study program. He also completed several didactics courses offered by MUL. In 2013, Thomas Lucyshyn was shortlisted as a candidate of MUL for the Austrian national university teaching award (ars docendi). He will be responsible for the implementation of the project at MUL and will also recruit additional colleagues from the department for the participation in the project PolyFlip.
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Prof. Gerald Berger-Weber
Prof. Gerald Berger-Weber from the Institute of Injection Molding of Polymers at MUL is an associate professor for polymer processing and brings in his technical knowledge on the subject as well as a long-term teaching experience at various institutions. Since 2011, he has been teaching at his home institution MUL mainly in the field of Injection Molding and Product Development: Lectures, lab exercises, an introductory computer simulation lab, a student project as well as seminars for bachelor, master and PhD students. He (co)supervised more than 30 academic theses. In 2016, he spent 6 months at the University of Applied Sciences hda Darmstadt, Germany, as an Interim Professor for Injection Molding. In April 2018, he stayed 1 month at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, MA, USA, as Visiting Professor. Prof. Berger-Weber is an active member of the curriculum commission of the upcoming study program Industrial Data Science at MUL. He also completed several German and English didactics courses offered by MUL and other Styrian Universities.
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Markus Orthaber
Markus Orthaber is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Mechanics at the Montanuniversitaet Leoben and is heavily involved in teaching and examinations there. He has been working extensively on blended learning and flipped classroom scenarios in engineering mechanics for the last 10 years including personalized learning paths in Moodle as well as the production over 200 educational videos so far. One of his further special fields is the electronic testing of work-intensive calculation examples not only in real examination scenarios, but also in the form of formative assessments (mastery tests) in flipped classroom teaching.
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Christian Kukla
Christian Kukla from the Industrial Liaison Department at MUL is an associate professor for polymer processing and brings in his technical knowledge on the subject as well as a long-term teaching experience at various institutions. His main job is networking with companies to generate projects together with the institutes from MUL, mainly related to polymers. His main field is injection moulding, Powder Injection Moulding and Additive Manufacturing. There he is doing research and technology & knowledge transfer. He was and is engaged in many national and international projects dealing with plastics, compounds, plastics processing especially Powder Injection Moulding (material development and rheology of highly filled polymers), Additive Manufacturing and the development and implementation of sensors/actuators into the injection moulding process. At MUL he teaches Powder Injection Moulding himself and contributes to other lectures, e.g. 'Materials for AM'. At the University of Applied Sciences in Wr. Neustadt he is teaching mainly 'Production Technologies' since nearly 25 years. Additionally he had guest lectures at FTPO, University of Erlangen-Nuernberg and others more. He will be responsible for the implementation of courses with the industry in PolyFlip.
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Sen. lect. Alessandra Rachetti
Alessandra Rachetti is employed as Senior Lecturer at the Chair of General and Analytical Chemistry at the Montanuniversitaet Leoben. She is mainly involved in teaching Chemistry Basics and Stoichiometry for first year engineering students and Analytical Chemistry in more advanced courses. She has been adopting flipped classroom techniques in her teaching and finds the approach very refreshing, and so do the students. She also acts as an ambassador for the technique at her workplace, always glad to share her experience with her colleagues. Ms Rachetti is a specialist for X Ray Fluorescence Analysis, especially in combination with chemometric data interpretation.