CONTEXT, the European network of experts on advanced textile materials, has closed its second grant period

Submitted by Josep Casamada on 05 May 2020

The European network of experts on advanced textile materials, CONTEXT, has closed its second grant period.

CONTEXT is a Cost Action led by AEI Tèxtils, the Catalan technical textiles’ cluster. It started on October 2018 with the aim of joining efforts at European level to facilitate the market uptake of new advanced textile materials, reducing the gap between research and industry.

It 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. 

The second grant period started on 1st May 2019 and lasted one year. This  included the following activities:

  • From 17th to 20th September’19, the first CONTEXT training school was organized in Rethymno (Crete, Greece). It was dedicated especially to textile materials in building&living and in personal protective equipment. Students included 16 professionals from 11 European countries with different profiles.
  • 3 calls for STSMs – Short Term Scientific Missions were launched.  STSMs are institutional visits aimed at supporting individual mobility, fostering collaboration between individuals and are primarily addressed to PhD students or postdoctoral fellows. 12 grants were awarded. Due to the Coronavirus crisis only 7 of them were completed.
  • 2 calls for Conference Grants were launched. These grants aimed at supporting PhD students and Early Career Investigators to participate at international science and technology related conferences.  1 grant was awarded.
  • WG4, together with the Textile ETP (European Textile Technology platform), IVGT (German Technical Textile Association) and FKT (German Textile Research Council) organized an International Seminar on Advanced and Smart Textiles in Architecture, Building & Living Environments (15th and 16th October’19 in Frankfurt, Germany). During the event, a workshop was held.
  • On 21st November’19, EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, hosted the WG1 (Textiles for healthcare and medicine) meeting.
  • WG5 organized a meeting during the Recent Progress Symposium on Textile Technology and Chemistry, from 20th to 22nd November’19 in Bursa, Turkey.
  • On 30th January’20 CONTEXT Management Committee met in Ljubljana. The day before, the 6 working groups of the network held their meetings. The meetings were hosted by the University of Ljubljana and organized by the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering.

Unfortunately, last activity planned in the period was cancelled. It was the conference Inmotion2020, originally scheduled in Weimar (Germany) from 27th to 29th April. The event has been postponed to April next year.

CONTEXT currently involves more than 250 experts from 34 countries in Europe and 4 international. The network is open to all professionals in the field of research, companies, clusters and end users, who can participate in the different activities organized.

The CONTEXT Management Committee has already approved the Work and Budget Plan for the third grant period from 1st May’20 to 30th April’21, including working group meetings, a training school, calls for grants, etc.

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