SuPER-W has set up a doctoral training programme having 4 pillars: 1. education through research, 2. education through exchange with the non-academic sector, 3. education through structured training courses, and 4. education through participation in public outreach activities. In their training, the SuPER-W researchers profited from the strong interactions with other early-stage researchers (ESRs), researchers from other institutions and companies active in the same field through the organisation of network-wide SuPER-W training courses and exchange activities. Explicit focus was laid on international as well as intersectoral mobility (obligatory internships), involvement of ESRs in dissemination, awareness raising and public outreach, and training in specific technical and complementary skills, such as entrepreneurship skills, IP management, conflict management, negotiation and discussion techniques, project management, career development, presentation techniques, popular writing and modern communication and networking skills. Furthermore, the ESRs were trained in translating research into policy, creative problem-solving, bottleneck identification for implementation of resource recovery technology, business case development, and more effective dissemination and exploitation of research results.
In total, the ESRs participated in 7 network-wide training events and workshops and a closing conference, in addition to the training they received in their local home and host institutions. All ESRs conducted a mandatory internship in the non-academic sector and a secondment of at least 6 months in the university that co-awards their double/joint PhD degree. Furthermore, they contributed to several outreach activities and tools, including a massive open online course (MOOC) on resource recovery from wastewater, the development of a workshop with didactical material on electrochemical resource recovery from water treatment, which they demonstrated for a group of school children in Peru, and a workshop for pupils on water, sustainability and resource recovery. In their research, the ESRs of SuPER-W tackled some major challenges towards making product, energy and resource recovery from wastewater more efficient. Technological challenges dealt with included the optimisation of transformation processes, concentration and separation, removal of unwanted compounds, and translation to low-tech environments. Non-technological challenges concerned enhanced exploitation of research results and translation of science into policy. The research programme was mainly technology-oriented, but significant attention was also given to the identification of (regulatory/economical/technical) bottlenecks in the implementation and exploitation of (novel) resource recovery technologies in Europe, stakeholder involvement, policy input formulation, the development of new business cases and industrial, urban, and mixed urban-industrial ecosystems, and assessment of the environmental, economic and social sustainability of wastewater treatment and resource recovery technologies. Two early-stage researchers focused specifically on these aspects.
