Grugliasco, 20 February 2024 – One year after the launch of the five PhD programmes in the field of next-generation battery production, co-funded by Comau together with the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Milano, a seminar was held today at the Comau site to present the projects carried out and share the results. The students’ discussion was enriched by the participation of teachers from the two universities and Comau’s Global Competence Center managers, who supported them in their research and development work.
The scholarship award includes a training and research path conducted in-house, together with Comau specialists, for a period of at least six months, which will be continued with work experience in a foreign country to be completed within the three years of the PhD. The group of researchers consists of three students from Turin (Mattia Longo, Francesco Gambino and Manzar Ilyas) and two from Milan (Pourya Heidari Orojloo and Sen Bai).
During the workshop, the students discussed the projects carried out in 2023 together with the Comau team, and the next steps. In particular, the PhD students at the Politecnico di Torino are working on the development of materials and production processes for next-generation cells, with the aim of making the production route efficient and scalable. Students at the Politecnico di Milano are dedicated to designing flexible, high-speed assembly systems for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries (both current generation and solid-state), controlling and optimising technologies and processes, conducting industrial feasibility studies and making prototypes to reach mass production. The five PhD projects, currently underway, are a demonstration of Comau’s continued and fruitful collaboration with high-end universities, such as those in Turin and Milan, with the aim of promoting a strategic exchange of skills and knowledge between the industrial and academic worlds. This joint work also enables Comau to know and therefore be able to respond to new market trends in an effective and highly specialised manner.
Colleagues Daniela Fontana, Head of Project Management funded within the E-Mobility Global Competence Center, Matteo Destro, Laboratory Manager, Michele Miglionico, Process engineer and Pantaleone Barbieri, Portfolio manager Cell Assembly.
“We are still in the first phase of the PhD programme, the first 12 months of research together with these youngstudents have been exciting. Everyone did a great job, innovative design ideas and technologies were proposed to Comau to develop complex processes in an unconventional way, on which we will base the next few months of experimentation and which we intend to use for the initiation of increasingly challenging future industrial projects”.
Daniela Fontana, Comau’s Head of Project Management funded within the E-Mobility Global Competence Center
The professors at the Politecnico di Torino who supervised the five doctoral students in the research projects are: Claudio Gerbaldi, Ordinary Professor of the Department of Applied Science and Technology (DISAT) and Julia Amici, Associate Professor DISAT, together with Giuseppe Antonio Elia, Temporary Researcher DISAT and Paolo Guglielmi, Ordinary Professor of the Department of Energy (DENERG).
For the Politecnico di Milano: Andrea Matta and Barbara Previtali, Ordinary Professors at the Department of Mechanics, together with Demir Ali Gokhan, Associate Professor and Nicla Frigerio, researcher at the same Department.
At this link, the contents of the research projects can be deepened thanks to the thoughts of professors from the Polytechnic Universities of Milan and Turin.