Innovation class at school

DerMap Srl, a company hosted in the Science and Technology Park “Luigi Danieli” in Udine and specialized in information technology for environmental monitoring, has been selected by the “Marinelli” high school in Udine for the “Fabbricando” contest, a competition promoted by ABS (Bertoli Safau Steel Mill, Udine) with the purpose of linking schools to business realities.

The company will introduce a group of students (attending their fourth year at high school) to its technology and production processes; this will help them come close to environmental research and innovation in particular, and it will give them the opportunity to realize a project for a national-level competition: the first prize is a trip to the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
The idea is to create a “laboratory” for the boys and girls to make themselves familiar with science and technology research and with the business world through experience and practice.

“We will explain them how ideas come to life and how they transform in a new product or service” explains DerMap President, Daniele Gulic “and how this process has to be constantly fed through teamworking, by beating circumstances to the draw and by being able to customize one’s choices on the needs of the market; also, we will explain how a proper education on environmental issues, together with technologies not well known yet, can truly benefit our territory”.
The students’ study will focus on the solutions DerMap developed for monitoring the terrestrial and marine environment, as well as technologies for an optimized management of urban waste collection processes and methods for satellite imagery analysis applied on a regional project for the Bay of Kotor (Montenegro).
The goal is for the students to produce a work with an innovation component, based on what they saw and learned; this work might be an idea or a project, as well as a concrete product. A few meetings between the class and DerMap have been scheduled; the first one took place in the Science and Technology Park in Udine on February 21st, 2011.

“We appreciate and encourage these kind of initiatives - says Director of Friuli Innovazione Fabio Feruglio - as they are a precious chance to make boys and girls aware of the research reality in our territory, to excite their passion for scientific research and technology and to give a contribution in helping them find their way to the professionalism of the future.