Author: Kaja Šeruga

When Professor Alicja Krzemień set out to turn one of Poland’s largest coal-mining waste heaps into a thriving meadow, she faced an uphill battle. Together with fellow researchers in an EU-funded collaboration called RECOVERY, her team revitalised the barren terrain at the Janina mine in Libiąż, southern Poland. They applied soil substitutes, aiming to provide […]

At this year’s International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, a small square house set up in Giardino delle Vergini told a story of resilience and ingenuity, demonstrating how innovation does not have to mean huge investment. Created by the Swedish non-profit foundation BetterShelter, it has become a common sight in emergency situations worldwide – from the impromptu […]

On the outskirts of Lisbon, an abandoned industrial site has been given a new lease of life as a state-of-the-art biorefinery. It is scaling up the production of microalgae – a new source of nutrition. These single-celled organisms can produce compounds such as proteins, lipids and carbohydrates with very little water and no need for […]

What do you think hell smells like? British researcher Dr William Tullett has faithfully recreated its foul odour – or at least how our forefathers imagined it. Thanks to an EU-funded research initiative called ODEUROPA, which ran from 2021 to 2023, Tullett did not need to spend years scouring archives across Europe. Instead, the information […]

Just outside the historic German town of Goslar, a sprawling industrial complex receives an endless stream of discarded electronics. On arrival, this electronic waste is laboriously prepared for recycling.  Electrocycling GmbH is one of the largest e-waste recycling facilities in Europe. Every year, it processes up to 80 000 tonnes of electronic waste, which comes in […]

As a young engineering student contemplating the direction of his doctoral research, Jaka Tušek knew he wanted to push the boundaries of science. “I wanted to work on breakthroughs, tackle something new that hasn’t been done before.” Today, the Slovenian researcher is on the cusp of the first major breakthrough in cooling technologies in the […]

Dr Marika Rošā, an expert on energy efficiency from the Technical University in Riga, wishes that everyone would just stop talking about it. “I think the term energy efficiency shouldn’t be used anymore because people don’t care about it.”  Her colleague Nicholas Stancioff, the founder of NGO Ēkubirojs, which is behind the so-called deep renovation of […]