Food4Health and Safety challenge
We also felt the enthusiasm of the students, which gives energy.
The Alliance and both ministries saw a unique opportunity to set up a transdisciplinary complementary collaboration. The current facilities (The Mobile Satellite Kitchen), to provide soldiers with food in the field were in need of renewal. There was a need for an innovative and creative exploration to explore different aspects for developing a new concept, from food hygiene and safety to sustainable energy and logistics.
What did the collaboration entail?
In this challenge, 68 multidisciplinary students designed solutions for a new mobile satellite kitchen for soldiers on mission during one semester. The Ministry of Defence indicated that they saw added value in asking students from TU/e, UU and WUR to develop a new food concept because they explore, research, design and develop from different perspectives compared to the experts at Defence. The creative and innovative mindsets of the students were seen as an added value to achieve a state-of-the-art solution.
Purpose of collaboration in education
Students have gained insight and can experience how you can develop design-oriented exploratory solutions by working together in an interdisciplinary team. An important added value is that students experience that knowledge must be acquired in a transdisciplinary context in order to develop innovative solutions.
The Alliance offers challenges to give students the opportunity to develop the personal and professional competences needed for their future professional lives. To prepare students for this, it is important to offer an authentic learning environment in which they can solve multi-complex problems by working in an interdisciplinary way and conducting research in collaboration with external stakeholders in order to develop an innovative solution in co-creation.
In general, I was positively surprised by the reporting and substantiation in the final reports. It was great to see the development of students.
(Intended) result
Ten teams each developed a concept and pitched it to a panel consisting of experts and the client. The client indicated that parts of different concepts were very interesting and gave new insights.
Collaborating party on behalf of UU
Alliance EWUU. This was open to all 3rd year bachelor and master students.
Collaborating external party
- Ministry of Defence
- Training Command (Royal Netherlands Army)
- Ministry Economic Affairs and Climate Policy
- Talentprogramme “Verzilver je talent”