STEM goes me(n)tal

For the past months, Umicore and Aperam, both valued members of the FMV-community, have worked together with Thomas More Hogeschool and Hogeschool PXL respectively on organizing holiday camps and Wednesday afternoon sessions for youthful STEM-enthousiasts, from the age of 14 to 18 years old.

This project is made possible thanks to the efforts of the members and the schools, while Flanders Metals Valley played a supporting role to finance the project – with a huge thanks to VLAIO. It is one of FMV’s key missions to promote science and technology to the future generation, so we are more than happy with the magnificent success of these camps and sessions. 

At Umicore, the youngsters created a complete VR-environment, mimicking the whole process of recycling batteries in an interactive, virtual way. This teaches about the importance of circular economy and Umicore’s role in it, and does it in an accessible and, equally importantly, fun way.

At Aperam, the job at hand was to create a robot in the dedicated makerspace. This real life robot would do – in scale – in the whole scrap trajectory from unloading at the harbour, to being processed at Aperam. Apart from that, the youthful STEM enthousiasts participated in a playful quiz and were naturally submerged in a VR-environment that explains the recycling cycle at Aperam.

Many thanks to all who made this possible!