Building Training Programmes for Young Professionals in the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Field
Fuel Cells and Hydrogen remain new topics to European professionals’ training agenda(s), despite considerable progress in the integration of these subjects into, for instance, university curricula. In particular, those professions with less of a basic materials and process engineering orientation will suffer from a lack of information during their academic or vocational training courses (i.e. manufacturing, component & systems design, etc.). This fact constitutes a major problem for the growing European companies in fuel cell and hydrogen (FCH) business, since the availability of candidates with a FCH background is low and the basic training of employees has to be provided internally.
The project contributes to tackling this training deficit by devising a system of vocational education and training (VET) for post-graduate engineers and scientists, either at a Masters or PhD studies level of education or already employed by a company. Based on an evaluation of current activities, including the many summer schools and short courses already being offered in Europe, a wider curriculum concept will be developed that offers an interconnected multidisciplinary system of face-to-face and distance learning programmes that can be attended in parallel to other studies or professional work. Elements of this concept are to be tested and evaluated. Two groupings of stakeholders (academic institutions as cooperation partners and industry as end user) will be involved in order to gain broad acceptance of the programme developed across the variety of European education systems. The concept developed will be a first stepping stone in establishing a relevant and coordinated curriculum for this target group in Europe.
The project closely works together with the project Hyprofessional that addresses the issue of training for technicians. Together, both projects cover all aspects of vocational training necessary for specialised industry in the fields of technicians, engineers and scientists.