CERENA’s researchers are involved at C5LAB.

The national cement sector wishes to be prepared in a timely manner for this rapid transition and be aware that successfully addressing the above challenges requires strengthening the relations between R&D organisations and the industry, capitalizing on existing scientific knowledge and consolidating decades of industrial experience as well as gradually widening the base of collaboration. The challenges for the cement sector in the context of a future low-carbon economy, particularly those arising from the ratification of the Paris Agreement, are of massive relevance and can only be solved by a collaborative approach based on scientific knowledge. The breakthroughs achieved are rapidly transferable to also benefit all combustion related industries; and, as well, to benefit the construction industry and ultimately the consumers and final users of the buildings and other construction infrastructures.

This is the main driving force to create the C5LAB. The creation of this CoLAB should result in a two-way road. On the one hand, researchers and graduate students coming from the academy, and the industrial sector can work together, giving companies the opportunity to

i)                    launch and contract R&D projects through the CoLAB,

ii)                  promoting R&D fundamental to their strategies, and iii) creating research infrastructures and small pilot instalations. These facilities would be dedicated to test specific technologies, processes, or products under development, sharing the investment risk in order to create employment, and added value to the economy. On the other hand, the academic and R&D sector may implement end-of-course projects, longlife learning, doctoral and postdoctoral programs, with high employability and impact in the national industrial and economic sector.

This will further foster collaboration between academia and companies in a consolidated manner along, at least, the next decade.