Improving the engineering education in the raw materials sector in an advanced, decarbonised, and digital European society

The minerals industry is facing a changing talent landscape. With digitalization and a transition towards a decarbonized economy, a mining industry necessitating new skillsets and with technology cycles that are getting shorter and shorter, the new panorama is transmitting pressure in the need of trained workforce, and mining companies need to ensure that their boards and staffs are properly constituted to support the transformations that the sector is currently undergoing, including fluency in such areas as technology, integration, systems security, and cybersecurity. In the raw materials sector, technology is not an end in itself. The greatest impact will come from embedding these technologies as an integrated whole and all across the mining value chain. The “New Industrial Strategy for Europe” (European Commission, 2020) addresses the twin challenge of the green and the digital transformation as both will require new technologies, with investment and innovation to match. Mining industry will create new products, services, markets, and business models, new types of jobs that do not yet exist, but which will need skills that students do not yet have. The breadth and depth, the scale and speed, the nature and necessity of the twin transitions are unprecedented. For this, the European industry cannot afford to simply adapt: it must now become the accelerator and enabler of change and innovation. This paper describes the activities developed as part of the MEITIM Project with the support of EIT Raw Materials, one of the eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) initiated by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology), funded by the European Commission, and whose mission is to help boost the competitiveness, growth, and attractiveness of the European raw materials sector through radical innovation and guided entrepreneurship. In this paper, the MEITIM conception and innovations are described, to show how three leading European Universities, with the help of EIT Raw Materials are shaping the way to help students to acquire and develop skills and knowledge addressed to this competitive environment, and become part of the highly-skilled workforce that the mining industry will require