JAMK and Bio Economics

by guest bloggers Ben Slaydon, Steven Gillespie and Austin Leonard

Monday started early around 9:00 AM, most of the group gathered in the lobby to eat breakfast before our departure to JAMK. JAMK is the local university of applied sciences located here in Jyväskylä. After a short drive we arrived at the JAMK technology campus and heard a short presentation detailing the university. JAMK has around 8500 students in total as well as 750 staff. The offer degrees in engineering, process control, bio economics and technology.

We were then given a walking tour of JAMK’s laboratories for process control, energy, automation and chemistry. The process control lab is where second and third year students learned how to fully operate and build control units for industrial applications. Their energy lab contained a small scale boiler operation where their students worked hands on with producing power and steam. In the automation laboratory the students work on testing systems responsible for automatically controlling temperature, air quality and lightning level for residential applications as well as industrial. After our stay in JAMK we travelled north to the bio economics institute located in Saarijarvi. When we arrived we were provided lunch.

We meet with Mr. Tarmo Lampila who gave us a presentation about biomaterial use in Finland. The college is one of the leading international research and development experts on bioenergy. Here we learned that Finland takes environmental friendly industry very seriously is looking for ways to increase its sustainable energy. One such way is the BioPool project which would create 100,000 new jobs and increase output from 60 to 100 million Euros.
We were given a tour of the boiler room which contained three boilers used to test new biofuels and for environmental regulation. This institute is also capable of testing outside boilers for regulate requirements.

After the boiler room, we received one more presentation on the formation of the European Union. We learned that economic entanglement was the weapon used to prevent another major war in Europe. At this point in time the EU has expanded to almost all of Europe besides Switzerland.

After this presentation we boarded the bus for the last time this day and headed back to Jyväskylä. Many of us explored the city since it is was our last night before heading to Tampere.