TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The ruling principle of the Plataforma Solar de Almería training program is the creation of a generation of young researchers who can contribute to the deployment of solar thermal energy applications. Through this program, about forty-five students of different nationalities are admitted each year so that we can transmit the knowledge of solar thermal technology accumulated at the PSA in its more than thirty years of experience to new generations of university graduates.
The main features of this training program are:

• Management of the Ph.D. fellowship program in association with an agreement with the University of Almeria (UAL) and with the own program to young researcher of CIEMAT.
• European funded ‘Erasmus’ grants, for students from other countries, mainly German.
• Management of miscellaneous educational cooperation agreements with other entities for sending students to the PSA (Universities of Complutense-Madrid, Almería, Dalarna-Sweden, Caddy Ayyad- Morocco, Antofagasta-Chile, Antioquia-Colombia, Polytechnic of Timisoara-Romania, Autónoma de Nuevo León-Mexico, Benemerita Autónoma de Puebla-Mexico, Çukurova -Turkey, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey-Mexico, Hamm- Germany, CENIDET- Mexico, Salermo-Italy, Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro-Portugal, Isfahan-Iran, Polytechnic delle Marche-Italy, Federal de Minas Gerais- Brazil, etc.)

  The close and enduring collaboration between CIEMAT and University of Almería has allowed for carrying out the second edition of the Official Master’s in Solar Energy. The hallmarks of this course, along with its quality, make it attractive proposition for students, both Spanish as well as those from other countries, who want to gain a first-rate qualification in the field of solar energy and its many applications.

Related with the Educational Cooperation Agreement between CIEMAT-PSA and the University of Dalarna (Sweden), from 3rd to 7th September, the “Solar Thermal Power” course was delivered by PSA researchers in the framework of the Master Programme in Solar Energy Engineering. With 5 credits, this course takes part on the 2nd cycle of this Master Programme organized by European Solar Engineering School, ESES (University of Dalarna).

The PSA is a founding member of the ‘Alliance of European Laboratories on Solar Thermal Concentrating Systems’ (SolLab), a virtual laboratory originally constituted by the main European concentrating solar energy research institutes, that is, PROMES-CNRS in Odeillo (France), the DLR Solar Energy Division in Cologne (Germany), the Renewable Energies Laboratory of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ, Switzerland), the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich (PSI, Switzerland) and the CIEMAT itself.

In order to promote the higher education of young researchers in the environmental applications of AOPs, as well as to overcome national boundaries and bureaucratic barriers, a group of European scientists founded the “European PhD School on Advanced Oxidation Processes” in June 2014.
These scientists have constituted what they call the Management Committee, which is composed of members from different Universities and Research Institutes with a strong and internationally recognized expertise in this field. The PSA is one of the members of this school since its creation.