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Besides driving the Holcim Awards and the Holcim Forum, another activity of the Holcim Foundation is funding
for research related to sustainable construction. The first five PhD students to receive grants discussed their projects with members of the Technical Competence Center (TCC) of the Holcim Foundation in Zurich.
“With PhD research grants the Holcim Foundation pursues the same goals as with all its other activities:
to support sustainable construction and promote exchange among experts,” explains Holger Wallbaum. The
professor for Sustainable Construction at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) is a member
of TCC.
Relevance in the local context
The TCC was responsible for distributing 200,000 USD that the Foundation
provides during each Awards cycle for PhD research grants. “Each of the five partner universities of the Foundation
submits a shortlist of interesting projects,” tells Holger Wallbaum. When deciding which projects to support, the question of relevance in the respective region is central. “We could not put all the projects in one pot; we had to acknowledge regional differences. Sustainability does not mean the same thing everywhere, so research associated with it does not have the same focus as elsewhere.”
Supporting interdisciplinary work
The TCC sees itself also as a “critical sparring partner for the PhD students,” explains the ETH professor. How the TCC interprets this role was perceptible during the three-day “research grant recipients contact meeting” held in February 2008 in Zurich.
The young researchers presented their projects to the TCC – and discussed the details of their projects with the experienced professors. “We do not intervene in the research concept,” tells Holger Wallbaum, “but we would like to closely follow the development.” The research grants also offer an opportunity to gather tomorrow’s experts at one table – as at this meeting in Zurich. “Students usually work with an incredibly specialized frame of reference, but sustainability requires an interdisciplinary approach, which we must support.”
The grant money does not go directly to the students but is managed by the respective partner universities. Holger Wallbaum: “In this way we make it possible for universities to best accommodate PhD research concerned with sustainability.”
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