phononic-vibes home

Sound-trapping panel-labyrinth: an invention by three Politecnico's Alumni

Forbes has dubbed them "the engineers of silence": Luca D’Alessandro, Giovanni Capellariand Stefano Caverniare three Politecnico's Alumni, researchers and founders of the start-up Phononic Vibes, born in 2018 as a Politecnico di Milano's spin-off which has recently won a 6 million euro funding round. 

phononic-vibes
Credits: Forbes

Underpinning this rapid rise is an invention (and 12 patents): a modular device for the isolation of low-frequency and broad-spectrum vibrations, in other words noise and vibration absorbing panels made of "labyrinth metamaterials" capable of absorbing both sound and mechanical waves. These metamaterials are artificially created with specific electromagnetic properties that distinguish them from other materials; their macroscopic characteristics depend not only on their molecular structure but also on their structural geometry.

They have a unique "labyrinth-like" designthat allows the wave to be reflected several times within the structure, thus progressively reducing until it disappears. Its periodic structures are made from materials commonly used in civil and mechanical engineering, such as steel and concrete, or even 3D-printed recycled plastics. Several of the devices can be assembled side by side to create a true soundproof barrier. The device is therefore able to limit the propagation of vibrations, both elastic and acoustic, generated by traffic, machinery and equipment, with the aim of mitigating against both structural damage to buildings and noise associated with an urban environment. Fonte: Polilink  

EFFECTIVE, BEAUTIFUL AND ECONOMIC 

Phononic Vibes' special feature is its panels, which are 3D-printed from waste plastic and enable a vibration reduction several orders of magnitude higher than that achieved by currently available technologies on the market, all at a significantly lower cost. It can eliminate many types of noise - from medium-frequency sounds, characteristic of speech and some musical instruments, to low-frequency sounds, caused by engines. It also has a wide range of applications, from construction to automotive to domestic uses.  

phononic-vibes
Credits: Sole24ore

Forbes has reported that the technology has passed the scrutinyof what has become known as the "Harvard of transport", i.e., Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company. "We developed a transparent, highly absorbent panel to be used around stations or railway tracks, as an alternative to the steel walls currently used to reduce noise pollution," says D'Alessandro. "A glass window has a completely different effect in an urban area, as glass usually reflects sound, instead of absorbing it.” Unlike the one produced by Phononic Vibes. 

THE FOUNDING ALUMNI 

Phononic Vibes’ journey is one of many examples of how the technology transfer of the Politecnico di Milano has a concrete impact on the high-tech industry, bringing the results of research activities out of the laboratories and into the corporate world.

Giovanni Capellariobtained his PhD degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 2018 with a thesis in Machine Learning, in addition to working and spending several months at the ETH University in Zurich.Stefano Cavernigraduated in Civil Engineering in 2017 with a thesis in the field of metamaterials, having specialised in Structures. 

Luca D’Alessandroreceived his PhD from the Politecnico di Milano, after having also spent a period of time abroad at MIT in Boston, specialising in the field of metamaterials and the optimisation of periodic structures for acoustic and vibration isolation. It was actually Luca's PhD thesis that was the starting point for the start-up. After participating in Switch2Product, the Politecnico di Milano's Innovation Challenge, Luca decided to embark on this entrepreneurial path by partnering with the two other founders Giovanni, a PhD colleague, and Stefano, a colleague and thesis student at the Politecnico di Milano. The business has experienced rapid growth, with its operational team now consisting of 10 people. Fonte: Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, “Il coraggio di innovare”  

alfio quarteroni home

Prof. Alfio Quarteroni has been awarded the 2023 Lagrange Prize

Alfio Quarteroni, director of MOX (Laboratory of Modelling and Scientific Computing) and professor at the Politecnico di Milano, was awarded the 2023 Lagrange Prize by ICIAM, the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. 

The Lagrange Prize is awarded every four years to internationally recognise mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to applied mathematics and who have undertaken innovative work in the field of numerical analysis during their careers. 

According to ICIAM’s website, "The ICIAM Lagrange 2023 Prize is awarded to Alfio Quarteroni for his ground-breaking work in finite element and spectral methods, domain decomposition methods, discontinuous Galerkin methods, numerical solution of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, multiphysics and multiscale modeling - with applications to fluid dynamics, geophysics, the human heart and circulatory system, the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as improvement of sports performance for the America's Cup sailing competition."

Quarteroni had already been listed as a runner-up in 2022, making him the first Italian mathematician to do so. He was also 48th in the world according to the "Top mathematics scientist" ranking published by the company Research.com, which orders these luminaries according to the number of their works that have been cited in scientific research. In fact, the Politecnico professor has been cited in publications 38,000 times by both Italian and international researchers. 

The 2023 Lagrange Prize will be awarded during the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, ICIAM 2023, which is due to be held in Tokyo from 20 to 25 August 2023.   

Discover more: Prof. Maria Prandini elected President of the International Federation of Automatic Control 

Credits home & cover photo: Linkedin

yape home

What to do if you meet a self-driving droid on the road? 

Maybe you have heard of YAPE, the self-driving ground drone created for "last mile" deliveries. It is designed to transport small packages, up to 10 kg in weight, between pavements, footpaths, vehicles, rails, cobblestones and traffic lights, tackling any unforeseen obstacles the metropolitan jungle throws its way in the shortest possible time and with maximum energy efficiency, at a speed of 6 km/h. It was conceived by a team of Politecnico di Milano researchers from the MOVE research group, one of the world's leading ones in the field of autonomous driving, which developed and constructed YAPE in collaboration with the e-Novia enterprise factory (discussed in MAP #7)..  

The news is that testing in an urban environment started this summer: for the next few months, 10 YAPEs will roam 'freely' (under careful supervision) across UpTown, the new high-tech residential district in Milan's Cascina Merlata area. "We are working to develop the collaborative and hyper-connected environment that characterises today's modern Smart Cities," said Vincenzo Russi, Alumnus, CEO of e-Novia and President of YAPE, "starting with the possibility of providing innovative vehicles for the transportation of goods. A project that in Italy, but also in Europe, must take into account the particular configuration of cities, which are very different from, for example, American cities. Our autonomous drone is designed to be able to move between medieval lanes and the complex topologies of Italian and European cities, enabling truly sustainable delivery". 

We also discussed this with Enrico Silani, Alumnus, Chief of Entrepreneur at e-Novia and Managing Director of the newly founded YAPE S.R.Lhe is the person who has steered YAPE's development, from creating a prototype to founding the company. "We were given the go-ahead to experiment with YAPE," he explains, "thanks to the collaboration between the Department for Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, and the City of Milan, as part of Sperimentazione Italia - the Regulatory Sandbox that authorises start-ups, companies, universities and research centres to experiment on innovative projects through a temporary exemption from current regulations”. 

#1: IF YOU WANT TO BUY ONE FOR YOUR HOME... 

First of all, we wanted to know who the YAPE drone is aimed at: is it designed to be sold to homeowners too? "We have not set ourselves a limit, but the diplomatic answer is no: YAPE is designed to be part of a logistics system, also for cost reasons. Generally speaking, costs in the digital electronics field follow a curve that sees significant reductions in the computing power of systems. However, in the past year this trend has changed and costs have multiplied for the same performance. So we are in a situation where it is impossible to make predictions.

The cost of raw materials, not to mention electronics, also varies from week to week. Given this situation, how can you analyse the market, calculate if a particular strategy will work or even simply provide a quote to a potential customer? “Quotations vary according to business transactions, which is now true for all vendors, from traders to service providers. The seller establishes a price according to the time that the customer is willing to wait. We operate on a case-by-case basis and, if the customer has entered into a contract with us which defines a price, we have to honour that, even if conditions change. Sometimes we find that the agreed price is below the production cost, in which case we open negotiations with the customer to see if they are willing to compromise. This is a bit like the conversations that we have with our suppliers.

. It is a very complex management engineering problem that forces us to review the hardware and software architectures of our systems, identifying the components that are more readily available than others on the market so that we can adjust as necessary. This allows us to keep the price of our product under control”.  

yape
Credits: courtesy of YAPE

#2: IN THE EVENT THAT A CLAIM IS MADE, IS THE DRONE ALWAYS RIGHT? 

Or, in other words, who gives it a driver’s licence? "It doesn't require a driver's licens: first of all, because it has a cylinder capacity of less than 50 cc. YAPE has not yet been officially recognised by the Highway Code, but theoretically such objects are halfway between a pedestrian, in the sense that they obey the same traffic rules as a pedestrian, and a vehicle such as an electric wheelchair (in terms of size and power). And then there is the fact that there isn’t a human driving it, but it is instead powered by artificial intelligence. A technical experimentation will gather data to better understand whether YAPE is capable of safely navigating a public area.”.

But what happens if YAPE runs a red light, for example? In this case again, the question is too human-centric: it is very difficult for an artificial intelligence to commit such a trivial offence, because it is equipped with sensors and algorithms that can handle a large number of predictable situations like this.  

#3: SHOULD I HOLD THE LIFT DOORS OPEN FOR IT? 

This is more so a question of how the drone behaves when met with different terrains and obstacles: for example, does it take the lift or the stairs?

"Let's not think about the older models of lifts we see today, which would require YAPE to have an extendible arm to push buttons placed at eye level (remember that YAPE is about half a metre tall). Instead, it is designed to interact with systems capable of exchanging messages, such as smart buildings and IoT systems, meaning it could call the lift via Bluetooth, for example.

From a technical point of view, climbing stairs and pressing buttons could certainly be possible, but it adds levels of complexity that risk compromising YAPE's cost-effectiveness. It's all a question of the cost-benefit ratio. The Cascina Merlata is a new generation of smart city district and is itself an experiment, so it is easier for YAPE to navigate”. 

yape
Credits: courtesy of YAPE

#4: DOES IT EXPECT ME TO SAY GOOD MORNING TO HIM?  

What happens if YAPE gets hit by a football kicked by children playing outside? Or if it comes across someone with reduced mobility? How does it first interact with pedestrians and other road users? "We have ensured that it can distinguish natural interactions with people or objects, such as cars and motorbikes, from those that are attempting to attack or vandalise YAPE. Natural interaction is one of the most studied concepts in the world; we are also undertaking a research project with the Politecnico to model pedestrian behaviour when faced with moving versus passive obstacles. The main result we are seeing is that YAPE is very positively received: it is new and therefore generates curiosity.

Then there is the question of design: YAPE has been designed to come across as friendly and empathetic. Let's go back to the elevator case. It is the same problem that we also ask ourselves about our 'fellow humans': how should I deal with those around me? Should I speak? Should I shut up? So much so that we are implementing a voice interaction system so that YAPE can give cadenced information on what it is doing”.  

RULE #5: WHAT IF THERE IS AN UNFORSEEN EVENT? 

What happens if someone attacks him? "YAPE is equipped with a series of algorithms to detect being lifted from the ground, burglary attempts, intrusions, tampering and collisions. It is equipped with a GPS tracker and is in continuous contact with a control room, which allows operators to receive alarm signals, check its telemetry status and have access to a remote control component. But even here we are not really talking about 'hitches'.

It is, rather, a question of risk assessment, it is about the risk/benefit ratio. It is clear that we cannot protect it from every eventuality: technically everything is feasible, but building a device with the same anti-intrusion system as an ATM just to deliver a small package is not cost-effective. We haven't mentioned it, but the same applies when human beings perform operations. We see situations on a daily basis where the courier delivering our parcels leaves the van unlocked or the bicycle unattended whilst walking to our front door to get a signature, taking the risk of leaving the goods unattended for a short period of time.

When we talk about safety issues, dealing with a machine raises questions that we ignore with procedures that involve human intervention , even if they still apply. When we delegate responsibility to a computer, we instinctively ask questions that, in the case of human operators, users no longer worry about”.

Discover more: YAPE, the autonomous driving robot made in Politecnico

girls@polimi home

GIRLS@POLIMI 2022: 15 engineering students honoured

Susan, Giulia C., Sara, Lucrezia, Federica, Chiara, Susanna, Francesca S., Anna, Beatrice, Ludovica, Raffaella, Giulia D., Virginia and Francesca P. are this year's winners of the 15 scholarships awarded as part of Girls@Polimi, a project within the Politecnico di Milano to support female students who, after high school, decide to undertake studies in the field of STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

The students were honoured at an event held on Thursday 29th September in the presence of Professor Donatella Sciuto, pro-rector of the Politecnico di Milano, and the donors.

The girls, enrolled in engineering programmes with a low number of female students, receive scholarships, each worth €8,000 per year, with the chance to renew them for their next two years of study. On this edition, the scholarships have been funded by 9 companies (Gruppo Autostrade per l’Italia, Bain & Company Italy, Banco BPM, Eurofins Foundation, Fastweb, Intesa Sanpaolo, Leonardo, Gruppo Nestlé in Italia, NHOA), by theUniversity itself and by private donors, alumni of Politecnico di Milano.

Girls@Polimi is an initiative of Gender POP, one of the lines of action specified in the Polytechnic Equal Opportunities strategic programme with which the University is committed to guaranteeing an inclusive and respectful study and work environment.

You too can support the Girls @ Polimi scholarships with a donation starting from 10 euros. Click here .

liciacube home

LICIACube witnessed the NASA/DART impact test with an asteroid

Along night time, September 26-27 the NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally impacted, at almost 25000 km/h, the asteroid Dimorphos, the smaller body in the Didymos. binary asteroid system.DART represents the first attempt to experimentally verify the humanity capability to deflect potentially Earth-threatening asteroid by driving a space probe to crash into the celestial body at maximum relative speed to shift the natural body orbit.

A crucial role in the mission is played by LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids), the small spacecraft entirely Italian-made, which will go down in history as the first European CubeSat to fly in deep space, far from our protected terrestrial environment.

liciacube
Credits: asi

LICIACube, infatti, dopo essersi staccato lo scorso 12 settembre dalla sonda madre DART, è transitato a poche decine di chilometri di distanza dall’asteroide colpito a una velocità di 6-7 km/s, affrontando la nuvola di frammenti per poterne acquisire immagini e riprendere, con le sue camere di bordo, il cratere formatosi, al meglio della risoluzione possibile, consentendo di raccogliere dati fondamentali per lo studio del piccolo corpo celeste e unico testimone della dinamica dell’urto con Dimorphos.

The ASTRA research group researchers, led by professor Michèle Lavagna, Giovanni Zanotti, Michele Ceresoli and Andrea Capannolo from the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology gave a key contribution to this futuristic mission success. During the past months, they hard worked in defining the LICIACube trajectory from the deployment until the asteroid flyby, while during the last weeks, after LICIA release from DART, they redesigned the crucial orbital manoeuvres to correct the CubeSat trajectory, exploiting the data sent on Earth by the small probe. Throughout the whole project, they worked in synergy with the Italian Space Agency, University of Bologna, Argotec S.r.l. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory personell.

The maneouvers they constantly worked on and performed by the small on-board engine, where aimed to avoid the debris generated by the impact while optimally pointing the on-board cameras to take the highest number of useful images, which will be later downloaded to Earth, to let the National Institute of Astrophysics scientists, coordinated by Dr Elisabetta Dotto, leader of the mission, work on their postprocessing.

LICIA represents a technological pathfinder and a primacy in the CubeSat arena, as it paves the way for such class of satellites to gaina role even on highly challenging space missions; moreover, LICIA witnesses a successful and profitable collaboration between Academy, Research Center and small enterprise, under the coordination of the Italian Space Agency, confirming the excellence of the technical-scientific competences of our Country and the professionality of our young researchers in an extremely high-profile international arena,

says Michèle Lavagna.

Read: https://www.polimi.it/apertura/dettaglio-apertura/home/liciacube-testimonia-limpatto-di-nasadart-con-un-asteroid

Credits cover image: ASI/Argotec

giorgia lupi home

Alumna Giorgia Lupi wins the National Design Award 2022 

Giorgia Lupi, Alumna PhD in Design at Politecnico di Milano, is the winner of the National Design Award 2022 for Communication Design. The award, presented by Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian Design Museum, recognises professionals who have distinguished themselves through their innovative impact in design. 

Lupi, over the years, has become a prominent voice in the field of data design: her work follows the philosophy of “data humanism”, or the idea that data design can be used to tell the stories behind numbers and statistics, which transform from impersonal and intimidating to so "human". 

giorgia lupi
Credits: Instagram

“With data we can write rich and meaningful stories. We can teach the reader's eye to become familiar with visual languages that convey the true depth of complex stories." 
 

writes Giorgia Lupi in her “Data Humanism manifesto”.

Her work stands out for the innovative way in which it synthesizes data, it tells a story capable of making the concepts conveyed by the data more accessible and easy to understand. Over the years, Lupi has worked for big brands such as Google, IBM and Deloitte, and has been published - among others - by the New York Times, Corriere della Sera and Wired. Her work is also exhibited in the permanent collection of the MoMa

“Sono incredibilmente onorata di annunciare che sono stata selezionata per ricevere il 2022 National Design Award for Communication Design (!!!). Presentati dal Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, e annunciati oggi, i National Design Awards celebrano i risultati eccezionali e l’innovazione nel design. …Per un designer non c’è niente di più grande. In qualità di professionista della data visualization nominata nella categoria del design della comunicazione per questo premio, vedo questo come un riconoscimento dell’importante ruolo che i dati svolgono sempre più spesso nelle nostre vite e del potere del design di usarli come risorsa per raccontare storie.” 

comments Lupi.

Credits home/header: Giorgia Lupi IG

Polimi Motorcycle Factory home

The prodigy that runs on two wheels  

Polimi Motorcycle Factory is a sports team at the Politecnico di Milano created in 2015 in order to take part in the international MotoStudentcompetition, which is held every two years at the international MotorLand Aragón circuit in Spain. The teams are tasked with designing, building, managing and racing an endothermic or electric motorbike.  

The competition is split into various stages: the first assesses the industrial design and the business plan while the second evaluates the performance of the prototype in static and dynamic tests, which culminate in a weekend of racing. Azul Amadeo is a last-year student of a Laurea Magistrale (equivalent to Master of Science) in Design & Engineering. She is the head of the fairings department in the Polimi Motorcycle Factory (PMF to its friends). “I thought about finishing my bachelor's degree at the Poli before going elsewhere to do a master’s. But then found PMF and my life changed course. I found the consistency that I was missing, a family and also lots of headaches... and an environment in which industrial design can express itself, where cut things that work are beautiful and beautiful things can work cut .And so I stayed for a master’s.”  

Azul joined the team in January 2018: “There’s an old rivalry between designers and engineers but it is outdated. Working on PMF is like a simulation of the world of work, where the teams are much more multidisciplinary than during our studies, where your work has an effect on that of others and vice versa: and rivalries are overcome, you have to learn to trust others. Those who join PMF also do so becausethey want to add meaning to their university careers, contribute to something and go away with a unique experienceIt has been like that for me. You really become part of something, you are not just a number.”  

“We gave ourselves a pyramid structure from an organisational point of view, in order to avoid sending parts into production that do not work, but everyone contributes. The glue that holds the team together is the motorcycleit’s a product of such complexity... and we created it. In the two years of preparation for the competition, working on the prototype, what was just a group of students becomes almost a family. The biggest change happens at the point where the largest components are manufactured, the motorbike is assembled and the work moves from CAD to the workshop.”  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

Champions of the world

PMF took its first motorbike to competition in 2016, just 8 months after the beginning of the project. They affectionately called it “la Cinghiala” (“the Sow”), because of its weight. The aim was to finish the race (which, as we will see later on, is not always a given). Given their early successes, the team worked with great ambition on a new prototype over the following two years: the Scighera (meaning fog in Milanese dialect), which was driven in the 2018 competition by Luca Campaci, a young rider and student of Mechanical Engineering, became the champion of the world in the Petrol category with a top speed of 197.1km/h.  

“The Scighera did some amazing things, it was a magical moment. It wasn’t 100% reliable, but on the day of the competition everything was perfect and, what’s more, that year we also won the fairing removal competition with such speed that students from the other universities were stunned. We returned victorious from Spain, with two cups and a list of accoladesincluding, in addition to first place overall, Best Design, Best Innovation, Business Plan, Best Acceleration (6,966”/150m) and 2nd Best Mechanical Test.” With this pedigree, PMF began working towards the 2020 edition (which became 2021 due to the pandemic) and decided to take two prototypes this time, one in the Petrol Category (with the Sciura - Milanese dialect for Signora - a fine-tuned version of the Scighera) and also in the Electric category for the first time in the team’s history, with the prototype Nyx (named after the Greek goddess of the night).  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

You can support this project with a donation. Give now

.The unexpected lies in wait

Each team receives a motor (a Ktm 250cc 4t), a set of slicks and a brake system (calipers and brake pumps) from the MotoStudent organisation for each prototype. The rest of the motorcycle is the team’s responsibility, which can choose whether to buy the parts or produce them in house, within the limits of the event’s official regulations. PMF prefers to produce them in house. "It’s difficult to design a motorbike from scratch because its performance depends greatly on the interaction between the various partsfinding the right balance so that everything works as it should is black magic,” explained Azul. “The pandemic hit us like an avalanche. In December 2020 we had to deliver certain parts of the bike for the 2021 competition, but there couldn’t be more than 3 people in the garage at a time. Until the last, we didn't know whether we would make it in time, but we managed it and by working 6 days a week with shifts of longer than 12 hours, we were able to develop very sound motorbikes.”  

Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF

But the spirit of MotoStudent is about craftmanship, motorbikes are unpredictable and things don't always go to plan. “Nyx, in the Electric category, had performed really well in the tests. Luca (our loyal rider) had managed to pull off rocket-fast times. However, , during the last lap of the race, the motor cut out several hundred metres from the finish line. Time was about to run out and the referees were approaching in order to help the rider move the motorbike off the circuit, but he brushed them off and heroically pushed the bike to the finish line for the sake of qualifying. It was 40 degrees, in July, in Aragón, and he was dressed to the nines in his racing suit. That’s what it means to belong to PMF. Thanks to him, we could compete, although Nyx unfortunately continued to cause reliability problems and we finished near the bottom. We still celebrated a lot in any case: not only because we had managed to finish the competition (for our first time in the electric category, it wasn't a bad result at all), but also because the atmosphere in those moments is so exciting and tense that when you finish, your emotions explode”.  

The team were counting on the Sciura in the Petrol category, remembering the victory with the Scighera. “We had a superbike rider for the Sciura. As a professional, he expected a certain pace and we struggled to keep up with him.” Almost all of the parts for the Sciura had been built by the team and the bike was performing brilliantly. “We had become really quick, we felt like drones with a hive mind. Ready for anything. But we had_lots of problems, beginning with the motor which broke on the eve of the competition (we had pushed too hard and, let’s be honest, the Ktm isn’t a great motor). We bent over backwards to replace it, because in Europe they aren’t easy to find. We reinstalled it overnight, working until 6 in the morning. It isn't easy: you have to remove the bike from the motor, not the other way around, because the motor is the heaviest part. And, once it is installed, you have a motor that you don't know, which has to be run in. At that point we decided to be thorough and change the fuel pump, replacing the one we had made with a professionally manufactured pump that we bought, in order to ensure greater reliability. It was a terrible mistake: when it comes to motorbikes, you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. Anyway, during qualification the pump let us down, the motor cut out and wouldn’t start again. For this, we were disqualified. It was a real shame, all we needed was to change the pump, but rules are rules.” Upon their return from Aragón, the students of PMF rolled up their sleeves ahead of the 2023 competition. It will be Azul’s last year, who in the meantime will graduate. “I’ll stay until the competition, for sure. PMF means to give everythingto build a team that becomes a family and lead it to do amazing things.”  

Polimi Motorcycle Factory
Credits: foto di Azul Amadeo, studentessa di Design & Engineering, responsabile del reparto carene nel team PMF
enactus home

Enactus: the Politecnico team wins and goes on to the world cup

Another victory brought home by the Politecnico: Enactus Polimi the no-profit University association that develops sustainable business projects, has won the sixth Italian edition of Enactus and is preparing to fly to Puerto Rico to participate in the world cup at the end October.

The Politecnico team –made up of engineering and design students, but also Alumni –entered the competition with two sustainability-related projects with the aim of improving the world through entrepreneurial action.

enactus
Credits: Enactus

THE ENACTUS POLIMI PROJECTS: SHEA MATTERS E OYSTER2LIFE

Shea-Matters is a project that supports the import of shea butter produced by a cooperative in Ghana run by women only. In fact, the European shea butter market generates much higher profits than the local market on which it relies: hence the idea of a new sustainable and fair trade route that connects Kumbungu to Milan. The goal is to guarantee the employees of the cooperative fair compensation that will enable them to make profits to be reinvested in other projects in Ghana: drinking water wells, bio fertilizer for the fields, a photovoltaic micro grid, a reforestation plan.

“We believe very strongly in this project ,” explains Claudia Ogliastro, biomedical engineering student and marketing team leader of Shea Matters, to the Corriere della Sera " Our butter can't be ordered yet but you can find it in some Equomercato-associated stores. We are looking for stores, herbalists and e-commerce businesses interested in selling it, but also people who wish to support our project and spread the word, even on social networks, to create a community that will then buy the butter because they support the philosophy behind it".

The second project is called Oyster2life and seeks to combat climate change in an innovative way by reusing oyster shells to rebuild the marine ecosystem and raise awareness of the importance of preserving our seas. Once collected (from restaurants, fishermen, etc.), the oyster shells are returned to the sea after eliminating all bacteria and organic residue from their surface.

In the sea, oyster shells help in this way the growth of molluscs that facilitate water purification and reconstruction of the seabed, providing new sources of nourishment for the repopulation of the lagoons and the sea, with high environmental and economic benefits.

THE NEXT STEPS

Enactus Polimi will represent Italy at theEnactus World Cup 2022 from 30 October to 2 November 2022 in Puerto Rico. The competition will feature innovators, creators, global citizens and business leaders, students and academics who want to act now to change the world forever. Stay tuned!