Second Training Event 2022

Connecting the ecosystem. An embedded bio-economy experience

30/05/2022 – 08/06/2022

The training consists of 2 modules: a presentation and a unique 9 day road trip.

Module 1: Sharing knowledge and preparing collaborations

• FutureArctic symposium – March 1st 2021:

Presentations from the students on the progress of their work and of their future plans and collaborations. The students give comments on all the presentations and discuss the results + the future collaborations.

• Dive into my research – June 5th 2022

Students present a relevant and interesting paper to the other students of the network during the trip from Antwerp to Copenhagen.

Module 2 Road Trip – May 30 – June 8 2022

The road trip will focus on the technological challenges associated with the permanent assessment of key processes in the ecosystem carbon cycle. The road trip consists of visits to the non-academical partners of the FutureArctic project and will include practical and theoretical sessions and some field visits. The different stops of the road trip are: Vienna Scientific Instruments (VSI, Austria), ILVO (Institute for Agriculture and Fishery, Belgium), IMEC (interuniversity microelectronics center, Belgium) and DMR (Dansk Miljørådgivning, Denmark).

The road trip will start in Vienna, Austria at VSI and BOKU (key responsible: Boris Rewald) where the students will get a comprehensive overview on the engineering workflow when designing, prototyping and developing custom-made smart instrumentation for the natural sciences. In a hands-on module, the students will gain practical experience building and programming an Arduino-based soil moisture sensor. Students will be enabled to translate the measurement requirements of natural science disciplines into technical solutions.

The next stop is ILVO in Belgium (key responsible: Peter Lootens). ILVO brings in the expertise on agricultural and field trial machinery. Here the students will gain insights in the interdisciplinary cross- over of methods and techniques between agro- and eco-research. They will be provided with hands- on examples of current challenges associated to independent UAV deployment. In the end, they will learn how to derive data from UAV images.

The trip will subsequently move to IMEC – Belgium (key responsibles: Maarten Weyn and Steven Latré), world- leading institute in nano-electronics and creating ground-breaking innovations in application domains such as internet of things, smart cities and energy. The students will visit the field application of ‘the city of things’ in Antwerp, where multiple sensors are installed city-wide to smart- track and steer city- life aspects such as pollution, mobility and safety. At IMEC they will continue to work on the sensor development board. The focus will be on the uplink, the management of data in a dashboard and machine learning and anomaly detection.

The road trip will end at DMR in Denmark (key responsible: Poul Larsen). Here the students will test their self-made equipment in the field and think critically about the application. They will also visit The Innovation Garage. This site is being used for development of novel techniques and equipment to investigate soil, groundwater and indoor air pollution. They will learn how to design their own experiment with intelligent sampling devices.

Overview of the Roadtrip