1 South-East Europe’s Raw Materials Resources—Strategic Basis for Sustainable Development

Raw materials are essential for future technologies and play a dominant role in developing solutions for the societal challenges in the transition to circular economy, renewable energy supply, and the development of sustainable mobility concepts.

The region of East and South-Eastern Europe (ESEE) is highly important for the sustainable development of Europe’s raw material supply, due to its geological potential of many raw materials, such as copper, bauxite, lead, zinc, chromium, manganese, and many others. There is also a high potential based on secondary raw materials.

2 ESEE-Dialogue Conferences Strengthened the Innovation Capacity of the ESEE-Region

Montanuniversität Leoben (MUL) made the strategic decision in 2014 to put the ESEE region in the focus of strategic efforts to strengthen the European raw materials sector. As an instrument for networking, a series of conferences, the “ESEE Dialogue Conferences”, was initiated to start a dialogue with relevant raw materials stakeholders in the region. When the EIT RawMaterials was later founded in 2015, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe was again defined as a strategic raw materials focus. During the preparatory phase, the Montanuniversität Leoben played an active role in integrating partners from the region into the EIT RawMaterials consortium. In order to introduce other potential cooperation partners to the EIT, the newly founded Resources Innovation Center (RIC Leoben) organized a total of fourteen “ESEE Dialogue Conferences” in seven countries and online in the following years:

  • Leoben and Linz, Austria (2014, 2015, 2019)

  • Zagreb, Croatia (2016)

  • Budapest, Hungary (2016)

  • Skopje, Macedonia (2017)

  • Belgrad, Serbia (2017)

  • Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2018)

  • Podgorica, Montenegro (2018)

  • Zagreb, Croatia (2019)

  • Online, focus “Brain Drain” (2020)

  • Online, focus Albania (2021)

3 Education is the Key to Innovation and Cooperation

The ESEE Dialogue Conferences promoted a dialogue in two ways: On the one hand, the conferences networked many universities in the ESEE region with each other, but also with universities from other European regions. This development also promoted the exchange of experience and cooperation in many educational projects. On the other hand, the ESEE Dialogue Conferences served as a platform for workshops to strengthen the entrepreneurial skills of students to mature innovations from an idea to a start-up. Consequently, the RIC Leoben contributed in the EIT RawMaterials working group “Education” in the ESEE region and participates in HEInnovate [1] to bring entrepreneurial thinking to universities, thereby making a valuable contribution to the development of innovation potential in the region and in Europe.

4 DIM ESEE—“First-Class Education in a First-Class Place”

In discussions with the University of Zagreb in 2015 (Fig. 1), a common desire to offer a course for experts from the raw materials industry in the ESEE region quickly emerged. Together with other universities (Technical University of Kosice, Université de Liège, University of Belgrade, University of Miskolc, Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, Dnipro University of Technology, University of Mining and Geology St. Ivan Rilski Sofia, Polytechnic University of Tirana, and University of Tuzla), a training program was proposed for funding as a project at EIT RawMaterials and succeeded.

Fig. 1
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First contacts of MUL (Alfred Maier) with the university of Zagreb in Dubrovnik, 2015

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The project title was: “Dubrovnik International Eastern and Southeastern Europe Region Mining School—DIM ESEE”.

The “Inter-University Center” in Dubrovnik, Croatia (Fig. 2), was identified as an excellent location for the training programs. This science center was founded during the Cold War in 1972 on the initiative of the then Rector of the University of Zagreb because “There was a wish to strengthen the role of scientists in bridge-building between nations and between cultures, between ideologies and between political systems” [2].

Fig. 2
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The Inter-University Center Dubrovnik (center)

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Every October, 40–60 professionals from the region gather in Dubrovnik for three (in the early years five) full days of technical presentations, case-study discussions and field trips (Figs. 3, 4 and 5).

Fig. 3
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Opening ceremony of the DIM ESEE workshops in 2019

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Fig. 4
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Case-study workshop-participants of DIM ESEE, Dubrovnik, 2019

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Fig. 5
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Virtual Reality demonstration during DIM ESEE, Dubrovnik, 2019

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The DIM ESEE workshops aim to provide a customized and industry-oriented school for raw materials professionals, academics, and PhD students and addresses topics of current relevance to the raw materials community (Table 1).

TABLE 1 DIM ESEE workshop topics
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The topics of the annual workshops are based on the results of an annual online survey and cover the entire raw materials value chain. Great importance is attached to a good balance between practical and scientific topics [3].

In 2023, the Resources innovation Center at Montanuniversität Leoben was responsible for creating the scientific program. MUL participated with seven specialist presentations on “Future smart mining with micro-organisms” (Robert Obenaus-Emler), “Latest developments in hard rock cutting” and “Resilient Bio-inspired Modular Robotic Miners—the Robominer project” (Nikolaus Sifferlinger), “How continuous is Continuous Mining?” (Hanno Bertignoll), “The Digitalized Mining Process—IlluMINEation project” (Philipp Hartlieb), “Safety Concept for production blasting in populated areas” (Hanno Bertignoll and Mark Ganster), and “Introduction to Earth Observation for the mining industry” (Rushaniia Gubaidullina). From the mining supply industry, the companies SANDVIK, EPIROC, AUSTIN POWDER, and DOK-ING contributed exciting topical presentations (Fig. 6).

Through the DIM ESEE project, a multidisciplinary network between academics and students within the ESEE region and associated industry has grown, contributing to the development and integration of the entire ESEE raw materials community and providing a platform for constructive dialogue with industrial partners.

In addition, DIM ESEE acts as an idea center/hub within the ESEE partner network, resulting in a number of successful industrial symbioses, in line with the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) of the funding body EIT RawMaterials.

Fig. 6
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Participants of DIM ESEE, Dubrovnik, 2023

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