The Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) is jointly responsible with ANI - Agência Nacional de Inovação for the constitution and operationalization of the creation of Collaborative Laboratories (CoLABs).
CERENA’s researchers are involved at C5LAB.
The national cement sector wishes to be prepared in a timely manner for this rapid transition and be aware that successfully addressing the above challenges requires strengthening the relations between R&D organisations and the industry, capitalizing on existing scientific knowledge and consolidating decades of industrial experience as well as gradually widening the base of collaboration. The challenges for the cement sector in the context of a future low-carbon economy, particularly those arising from the ratification of the Paris Agreement, are of massive relevance and can only be solved by a collaborative approach based on scientific knowledge. The breakthroughs achieved are rapidly transferable to also benefit all combustion related industries; and, as well, to benefit the construction industry and ultimately the consumers and final users of the buildings and other construction infrastructures.
This is the main driving force to create the C5LAB. The creation of this CoLAB should result in a two-way road. On the one hand, researchers and graduate students coming from the academy, and the industrial sector can work together, giving companies the opportunity to
i) launch and contract R&D projects through the CoLAB,
ii) promoting R&D fundamental to their strategies, and iii) creating research infrastructures and small pilot instalations. These facilities would be dedicated to test specific technologies, processes, or products under development, sharing the investment risk in order to create employment, and added value to the economy. On the other hand, the academic and R&D sector may implement end-of-course projects, longlife learning, doctoral and postdoctoral programs, with high employability and impact in the national industrial and economic sector.
This will further foster collaboration between academia and companies in a consolidated manner along, at least, the next decade.
+Atlantic aims to develop knowledge about the interactions between the Ocean, Atmosphere, Climate and Energy in the Atlantic, through an integrated approach “from deep sea to space”. Promoting development of the blue economy and highly qualified employment from a perspective of sustainable use of resources, +Atlantic contributes to the full realization of the Ocean's potential for society by focusing its activity on the advanced investigation of space, ocean and energy technologies, complemented with up-to-date techniques science, leveraging the development and implementation of new infrastructure and maritime platforms which will constitute new data sources for the Atlantic and the creation of synergies between the scientific and technological and the market approach.
CERENA’s researchers are also involved at CoLAB + Atlantic, namely in the area of numerical modelling, in which CERENA, with its vast experience in the fields of geosciences and numerical modelling, will contribute. The area of numerical modelling works as a facilitating mechanism for understanding the ocean and its exploration.