RTU Organizes EUt+ Financial Management Staff Wee

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During April 17th – 21st, Riga Technical University (RTU) successfully organized very first European University of Technology (EUt+) Themed Staff Week, Financial Management Staff week. The workshops were joined by 5 of the EUt+ partners, namely, University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) in France, Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT) in Spain, Technological University Dublin (TU-Dublin) in Ireland, Hochschule Darmstadt University of Applied Science (h_da) in Germany, and Technical University of Sofia (TUS) in Bulgaria along with the RTU staff members. During the week, workshops on topics such as financial and project management in cooperation, scientific and mobility projects were discussed.

On Tuesday, the opening day of the event, Artūrs Zeps, Vice-Rector for Strategic Development and Finance as well as the Deputy Rector for International Academic Cooperation and Studies, Igors Tipāns, gave an opening speech to welcome our guests as well as to kick-off the topic of financial management. The session was followed by a Keynote on Data Analysis from Ingars Eriņš of the Department of Artifical Intelligence and Systems Engineering. Following the opening session, a presentation from Liene Auziņa from Project Financial Management Unit was given on the RTU’s structure and financial management, followed by presentation on the EUt+ given by Kārlis Valtiņš, Head of the International Projects Unit, as well as about Capacity Building (CBHE) projects by Timo-Juhani Turunen and his team.

On Wednesday, financial management in scientific projects were discussed and we were joined by members from Latvian Science Council, who gave a throughout presentations on projects such as Postdoctoral Fellowships, Doctoral Networks, Staff Exchange, COFUND and MSCA and Citizens. We finished the working sessions with an Escape Room game that allowed our guests to practice some of the data analysis and finance skills in a fun, collaborative way.

Lastly, on Thursday RTU had invited member from Latvian National Agency to present on the mobility projects and financial management within those (KA131 & 171), as well as a workshop was conducted by the International Projects Mobility Unit on the challenges faced in the KA171 projects as they pertain to financial management.

Along the workshops on these projects, our guests had a chance to explore Riga during city tour, get familiar with our campus during the campus tour, as well as to socialize during the dinner hosted by RTU.

Capacity-Building Project SMARTI Teaching Staff Training in Liverpool

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SMARTI is a three-year capacity-building project in higher education led by the Technical University of Dresden, aimed at developing and implementing English Media instruction pedagogical Core Curricula for higher education courses in Armenia. EMI has revolutionized language learning and educational curricula by empowering teachers and students, and this innovative project offers a sustainable model of teacher training and retraining based on EMI pedagogy integrated into student-cantered learning and the project method.

The partners from Europe and Armenia are having an intense training week at Liverpool Johns Moores University in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to work on the development of EMI modules. Riga Technical University will be represented on third day of the training by professors Tatjana Smirnova and Marina Platonova from The Institute of Applied Linguistics Read more about the project: About – SMARTI (smarti-erasmus.eu)

Congratulations to Mukul Rathore on the successful defense of his PhD dissertation!

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Congratulations to Mukul Rathore for the successful defense of his PhD thesis, “High Reclaimed Asphalt Content Mixtures: Design Parameters and Performance Evaluation” to the Riga Technical University Faculty of Civil Engineering!

Mukul’s doctoral study was developed at the Department of Roads and Bridges at Riga Technical University and Celu Eksperts in Latvia. This work was supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 Sustainable, Accessible, Safe, Resilient and Smart Urban Pavement (SAFERUP!) program.

The overall purpose of SAFERUP! is to provide cities with innovative solutions that will form the future urban paved environment, by training talented researchers in the fields of: smart, recycled and durable paving materials; provision for vulnerable users (e.g. elderly & disabled) accessibility and protection; studying user behavior; life cycle analysis; wash-off water management and bioremediation; tempered and acoustic pavements; energy harvesting and self-sensing technologies.

Mukul’s doctoral research was focused on solving issues with asphalt recycling, particularly when conducted at a very high rate.

“Currently, most countries only allow up to 30% recycled asphalt content in new asphalt surfaces,” said Mukul. “For this reason, the ultimate goal of this PhD was to reduce the gap between science and practice for the implementation of pavement mixtures produced using 100% of recycled asphalt—without any new aggregates.”

In his doctoral study, Mukul developed new procedures that can be adopted at both design and evaluation stages of high content recycled asphalt mixtures. These procedures standardize the preparation of laboratory specimens for their reliable comparison, as well as recommend new performance indicators that are particularly important for recycled asphalt mixtures.

Mukul also studied how 100% recycled asphalt mixtures perform in the long-term, after being treated with chemical agents known as “rejuvenators.”

“Because the most important benefit of recycling asphalt is to reduce the carbon footprint of road construction, a systematic life cycle study was also done to understand and compare the environmental impacts of different pavement alternatives,” he added.

 

Mukul is currently working as a Pavement Engineer at Mott MacDonald Birmingham, a global engineering, management, and development firm in the United Kingdom. He uses the knowledge obtained from doctoral study at RTU  in material and testing to solve technical problems associated with pavements and suggest low carbon footprint opportunities for various global projects.

All of us at Riga Technical University are thrilled to see the fruition of Mukul’s dedication and hard work.