On January 30th, 31st and February 1st, Barcelona will host several events from the European network of experts on advanced textile materials CONTEXT, led by AEI TÈXTILS.
CONTEXT is part of the COST program of the European Commission and aims to join efforts at European level to facilitate the market uptake of new advanced textile materials, reducing the gap between research and industry.
The CONTEXT Management Committee, which was formally constituted on October 11th, is made up of representatives from 29 countries. The network is open to all professionals in the field of research, companies, clusters and end users, who can participate in the different activities that will be carried out during 4 years.
CONTEXT is structured in 6 working groups, 5 of them focused on different applications of advanced textile materials: healthcare/medical, automotive and aeronautics, personal protection, building and living, sports and wearables. The sixth group focus is dissemination and communication.
On January 30th in the afternoon, the first meeting of the 6 working groups will be held. The objective of this meeting is to share the different capacities of the participants in each group, define the main trends and lines of research related to each final market for textile materials and propose the actions that will be carried out in the next semester. These actions include, among others, the organization of thematic workshops that bring together researchers, industry and end users with the objective of discussing the possibilities of technology, the possibilities of industrialization and the needs of the market.
On January 31st, an International Conference will take place at the Residència d’Investigadors de Barcelona, with the objective of presenting CONTEXT to the business world in particular, how they can get involved in the initiative and to promote R&D activities demonstrating that they are not that far from the industry and that there are real possibilities of success. The program is structured in 3 main blocks:
- Presentation by experts of the trends in textile materials in the 5 areas of application covered by CONTEXT.
- Debate on the real possibilities of application in the European SMEs of the concepts of digitalization, industry 4.0, sustainability, circular economy and related topics.
- Presentation of 10 success stories of European companies that launched a new product to market as a result from a collaborative R+D project together with a research center.
Finally, on the morning of February 1st, the CONTEXT Management Committee will meet to discuss the main general lines of work, which include the presentation of the results of the sessions of the working groups held on the 30th, the proposal of activities for the next period or the inclusion of international members, among others.
