Cooperation in food science and technology

Cooperation between Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences and Life Sciences at Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe in food science and technology. The task of the trip, besides getting to know the cooperation university Technische Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe (TH OWL), was to get closer cooperation between TH OWL and SeAMK. To this date the cooperation has been that students from TH OWL in Lemgo in life science, Ms Sylvia Fasse and Ms Carolin Müller, led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Björn Frahm has performed their final theses at SeAMK. Furthermore, Prof Björn Frahm and Jarmo Alarinta have visited each other’s institutions some years ago (in 2018-19).

The aim of this Erasmus+ travel, in which SeAMK’s representatives Jarmo Alarinta, Karri Kallio and Gun Wirtanen took part, was to improve the cooperation both in research and in student exchange. The head of Erasmus+ at TH OWL, James O’Reilly, Prof Dr. Thomas Gassenmeier, who is the acting dean as well as several professors, Manuel Zimmer, Stefan Wille and Björn Frahm, showed interest in building up such cooperation (Figure 1). During this year (2022) the work forces at both institutes will plan a blended mobility course in food processing. In this course, approx. 10 students from SeAMK will visit TH OWL for approximately one week and vice versa. Furthermore, teacher exchanges were also planned and cooperation within projects will be a focus area. The SeAMK representatives told about a project on entrepreneurship, which has received funding in Finland. The professors at TH OWL are interested to take SeAMK’s questions further to German SMEs as long as SeAMK is translating the questions drawn up for Finnish enterprises.

Gun Wirtanen, Karri Kallio & Jarmo Alarinta
SeAMK, Seinäjoki, Finland

Manuel Zimmer & Björn Frahm
TH OWL, Lemgo, Germany

There will be separate articles about the visits to various laboratories, the activities in the Enterprise Centre and the city tour.