Education & Communication
Education
Education begins with POMP, the Pool Of MELiSSA PhD: an international scholarship programme funding doctoral and some postdoctoral research tied directly to the MELiSSA scientific agenda. A POMP scholarship runs for four years, three of them at one of Europe’s leading universities and a fourth embedded in the laboratory of a MELiSSA partner, so every student finishes having worked inside the consortium itself, not just alongside it. POMP students also join the wider MELiSSA PhD pool, with access to ESA support should their research lead to a spin-out company.
Every two years, that pool comes together at the MELiSSA Summer University, where PhD and postdoctoral researchers from across the consortium spend several days comparing results, meeting the scientists behind the papers they cite, and building the kind of informal network that keeps a research programme of more than 35 years coherent across a growing network of laboratories.
Communication
Communication runs on two tracks. Every two years, the MELiSSA Conference brings the whole consortium together to present results, set priorities for the next cycle, and welcome new partners and PhD students into the programme; it is the closest thing MELiSSA has to a general assembly. Between conferences, MELiSSA researchers take the work to wherever the relevant audience already is, from process engineering and chemistry congresses to ESA open days and public exhibitions, translating more than 35 years of closed-loop research for whichever room they are in.
Past MELiSSA Conferences
Earlier editions were held in Lausanne (2016) and Rome (2018).
Art and imagination
Circularity is not only a matter of engineering. Friends of the Loop is a separate initiative that explores the imaginative side of closed loops through short films, visionary images and abstract digital artworks inspired by ideas from its visitors. It carries the thinking behind MELiSSA to audiences that a scientific congress rarely reaches.