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The Research Department Closed Carbon Cycle Economy (RD CCCE) provides an organisational framework for the pooling of relevant research initiatives. Particular attention is paid to the creation of positive framework conditions for the acquisition of coordinated interdisciplinary collaborative research projects, whereby the focus is on the promotion of young scientists as well as excellent research. The Doctoral School Closed Carbon Cycle Economy (DS CCCE), which is part of the Research Department, is dedicated to the promotion of young researchers and forms the basis for the interdisciplinary training of doctoral students in the Research Departments. The actual scientific education is usually disciplinary - even a Closed Carbon Cycle Economy first of all needs scientifically excellently trained experts for the most diverse questions. However, the accompanying doctoral programme of the Doctoral School ensures through a interdisciplinary training and qualification programme that the members of the DS CCCE also develop the absolutely necessary interdisciplinary understanding for the relevant questions - colleagues from different departments must develop a common language and a common understanding for the problems to be solved in order to be able to master the transition to closed carbon cycles in the long term.

The Doctoral School Closed Carbon Cycle Economy is funded from April 2019 to April 2022 as part of the Virtual Innovation and Technology Center Carbon Conversion (ITZ CC) by the Ministry of Economics, Innovation, Digitization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia. As part of this funding, the Doctoral School CCCE will first create the structures for scientific support and sustainable structural change in the Rhenish lignite mining area, taking into account the long-term goal of closing carbon cycles. To this end, 17 PhD projects are currently being funded that deal with a broad range of topics - from the natural sciences to technical developments, legal aspects, economic and social science issues to ethics - on issues relating to the material use of coal, the use of the areas freed up in the Rhenish lignite mining area for the supply of regenerative carbon, the establishment of new economic clusters and aspects of the forthcoming structural change. For this purpose, a processing time of three years is planned, corresponding to the usual duration of doctorates for research schools.

In addition to the doctoral students funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the current project, the DS CCCE is also open to other doctoral students active in the field of the Research Department Closed Carbon Cycle Economy. Doctoral students from associated projects can become members of the DS CCCE and participate in the qualification programme upon application  and with the approval of their first supervisor.

In addition, interested research institutions, companies and authorities that pursue specific and proprietary interests with cooperative doctoral projects are offered the opportunity to have doctoral candidates they finance or release qualified as members of the DS CCCE beyond the technical aspects in an interdisciplinary manner (when taking proprietary research into account, of course, the EU framework must be taken into account). By opening the Doctoral School CCCE to doctoral students who are financed from other sources, the Doctoral School CCCE has an interdisciplinary qualifying effect beyond the circle of currently directly funded students.

Further details on membership in the DS CCCE can be found in Order of Procedure.

Membership application DS CCCE