Alessandra Hool

Alessandra Hool, MSc, has a background in History and Philosophy of Science and International Law and Economics. Since 2017, she has been the CEO of ESM Foundation – Foundation for Rare Metals. The Foundation is dedicated to fostering research and development in critical raw materials with a focus on a more sustainable management of these resources.

Alessandra is the coordinator of the consortium developing this course as well as of other projects related to critical raw materials and their sustainable management, such as the International Round Table on Materials Criticality (IRTC).

Ester van der Voet

Ester van der Voet is an Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Department of Industrial Ecology of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). Her research focuses on resource use and resource management, resource efficiency, metals, critical materials, and biobased materials.

She has initiated three MSc programs in Industrial Ecology and circular economy: a joint degree program between Leiden University and TU Delft, and two international double degree programs with partners from EU, US, China, Japan and Australia.

She is a member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel. Her present activities mainly focus on the circular economy and urban mining, specifically scenario development at different scale levels and building up information systems to support local, national and international policies on sustainable resource use.

Eimear Deady

Eimear is an economic geologist at the British Geological Survey. Previously she worked in mineral exploration. She is an expert in the genesis of mineral deposits and is particularly interested in tungsten hydrothermal systems and magmatic rare earth element deposits.

She also works on compiling world mineral production statistics annually with the team at the BGS.

Dieuwertje Schrijvers

Dieuwertje works as a consultant in the field of Life Cycle Assessment and Raw Material Criticality Assessment at the company WeLOOP (France). She obtained her PhD on the topic of the modelling of recycling in LCA at the University of Bordeaux.

As a postdoc at the same university she gained experience in the evaluation and mitigation of raw material supply risks within the EIT RawMaterials-funded project International Round Table on Materials Criticality.

Guido Sonnemann

Guido Sonnemann is Full Professor at the University of Bordeaux where he heads The Life Cycle Group (CyVi) at the Institute of Molecular Sciences. The focus of his research is on Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Chemistry and Materials Sciences. Guido Sonnemann is programme director for the participation of the University of Bordeaux in the KIC EIT Raw Materials and coordinator of the International Master programme on Advanced Materials Innovative Recycling (AMIR). He is co-founder and Executive Committee chair of the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSLCI).

Until 2012 Guido Sonnemann was Sustainable Innovation Programme Officer and Science Focal Point for UNEP’s Resource Efficiency sub-programme. He has completed Master degrees in Environmental Engineering (TU Berlin) and Environmental Chemistry (Univ. Poitiers) and holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering (URV, Tarragona).

Patrick Wäger

Patrick Wäger is Head of the Technology & Society Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa). He has completed a master’s degree in chemistry and a doctorate in environmental sciences at ETH Zürich as well as a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and sociology at University of Zürich. In his research he addresses questions related to the role of novel materials and emerging technologies in the transition to a more sustainable, post-fossil society, with a particular focus on raw materials supply risks, resources characterisation, evaluation and classification and circular economy issues.

Charles Marmy

After studying environmental engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Charles Marmy began his career at an engineering consulting firm in French-speaking Switzerland in 2016, where he became project manager in the environmental field. He focused on waste management and final disposal as well as their institutional and financial aspects in Switzerland and abroad. Polluted sites remediation represented a significant share of his activi-ties as well.

Since 2020, he has been working in Empa’s Technology and Society Laboratory, where he is in-volved in or leads applied research projects. Waste management remains his specialty, with the added perspective of circular economy and recycling. His thematics of choice revolve mostly around the origin and fate of scarce technology metals, the recycling of electronic waste and the future of our Li-Ion batteries and the potential of urban mines in general. His approach is generally societal and systemic.

Tatiana Vakhitova

Dr. Tatiana Vakhitova has been working in the sustainability field for more than a decade in both academic (at doctoral level) and industrial capacities. She gained a PhD Degree in 2013 at the Centre for Sustainable Development (Engineering Department, University of Cambridge) and an MPhil in 2008 at the Department of Land Economy (University of Cambridge). Tatiana is a part of the academic relations team at Ansys Inc. (prev. Granta Design). She works on sustainability teaching resources, managing a regional team, which supports teaching with GRANTA EduPack of engineering, materials science and design, at university-level in various European countries.

For the last seven years at Ansys Inc. she was involved in various educational and software development-related projects; these include EduPack development, support with integration of teaching resources and the software into curricula, coordination of European projects, contribution to educational networks activities. Tatiana has published, developed workshop material, delivered lectures, supervised students and presented at various international conferences. She has experience and knowledge in environmental and social impact assessment, Social Life Cycle and Sustainability Assessments, CSR, education and sustainable built environment.

Stefano Cucurachi

The Leiden University principal investigator (PI) Dr. Stefano Cucurachi (Male), is Assistant Professor in Industrial Ecology at the CML Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the USA. Stefano has ten years of experience in the field of LCA. Stefano has a wide experience in the development of methods in LCA, and on methodological improvements, in particular in the field of uncertainty analysis and in the area of quantification of the uncertainty sources related to the results of LCA studies.

In the last years, the focus of his research has shifted to the application of LCA to assess the sustainability potential of emerging technologies, the so-called ex-ante LCA classes of methods. Stefano has applied ex-ante LCA to assess novel chemical synthesis pathways, and to new energy technologies, such as tandem solar cells, among others. Such research allows assessing the impacts of emerging technologies at an early stage of their development curve, so as to minimize their potential future impacts and avoid regrettable product substitutions. Stefano has published 30 peer-reviewed papers on LCA and ex-ante LCA, is active in international working groups on the topic and is currently a member of two international EU-funded projects oriented at assessing the sustainability and circularity potential of emerging technologies. Stefano currently supervises 2 PhD students and a postdoc on the topic of ex-ante LCA.

Antti Roine

Dr. Antti Roine is Director in Digital Platforms organization of Metso Outotec, Finland. He is head of the Modeling and Simulation team, which develops artificial intelligence expert system platforms and applications for process design and operation. He is a graduate of Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto University) and began his career at Outokumpu (Metso Outotec) in 1978 as a summer trainee.

He has been a project manager on a large number of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical projects. He has also supervised the thesis work of 15 students. He started the development of HSC Chemistry software at Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto) in 1979 and has been in charge of HSC development ever since.

Antti Roine and HSC software have been cited 15643 times in Scopus (17 Jan 2018).

Markus Reuter

Markus Reuter has been a Senior Expert at the SMS Group, Düsseldorf, Germany since 2020 and an adjunct Professor at Curtin University in Australia since 2018. Markus is also an honorary Professor at Bergakademie TU Freiberg in Germany since 2015.

He was the Chief Technology Officer in Ausmelt Australia and the Director Technology Management at Outotec in Australia and Finland from 2006 until 2015. Markus was the Director of the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology in Germany from 2015 until 2020. He was a professor at TU Delft in The Netherlands from 1996 until 2005, and Professor at Melbourne University in Australia (UoM) from 2005 until 2018. Markus was also a Professor at Aalto University in Finland from 2012 until 2017 and guest Professor at Central South University in China from 2012 until 2017. Markus was the Leader Furnace Control Group in Mintek, South Africa from 1994 until 1996, and a process Metallurgist at the Anglo American Corp in South Africa from 1984 until 1985.

Ruud Balkenende

Ruud Balkenende is professor of Circular Product Design at the faculty Industrial design Engineering of TU Delft. His research, projects and teaching concentrate on the connection between product design and circular economy, focusing on design for recycling and design for circular economy.

René Kleijn

René Kleijn holds an MSc in chemistry and a PhD in Industrial Ecology both from Leiden University. He is now an associate professor at Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University.

In his research he focusses on the development of industrial ecology tools like (dynamic) Substance Flow Analysis (SFA), Material Flow Accounting (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Currently the most important case studies are on the material constraints of novel (energy) technologies, circular economy, eco-innovation and resilient supply chains.

Steve Young

Steven B. Young is an industrial ecologist supporting the transition to a low-carbon and circular economy. He researches resources and materials using scientific methods like life-cycle assessment and management approaches like sustainability standards and certification. Dr. Young is an associate professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise & Development (SEED) at University of Waterloo, Canada. He holds degrees from University of Alberta and University of Toronto, and is widely published in management, resource and sustainability journals.