The focus is on energy effi ciency in industrial processes, and the main sub-activities are (i) methodologies for analysis, design and optimization, (ii) improved equipment and cycles, and (iii) systems integration including industrial parks (clusters). The education activity takes place at diff erent levels such as Master students having theses related to HighEFF, PhDs and Postdocs with research and publications related to energy effi ciency in industry, and employees from user partners taking tailormade intensive courses to become energy effi ciency experts in their companies.

By the end of 2019, HighEFF had recruited a total of 23 candidates (18 PhDs, four Postdocs and one researcher). One PhD will start in January 2020, and the last PhD position will be announced early 2020. One PhD and one Postdoc finished in 2019. We also have had eight associated PhDs (i.e. working on HighEFF related topics), and two of these finished in 2018.

Our education program also spans across countries and continents. HighEFF academic partners currently include two from Norway (NTNU and Nord University), two more from Europe (KTH in Sweden and University of Manchester in the UK), two in the US (MIT and CMU) and two in Asia (Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and Doshisha University in Japan), a total of eight universities.

The considerable number of recruited candidates has resulted in a large number of publications and conference presentations. HighEFF had 36 journal publications and 43 conference presentations in 2019 (both are “all time high”) with at least one of the publications (PhD Cristina Zotica) received Best Paper Award among 250 papers on the ESCAPE’29 Conference in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, June 2019.