The Australian Government, through the National Forest Industries Plan, Growing a Better Australia – A Billion Trees for Jobs and Growth and in conjunction with Forest & Wood Products Australia, has launched the 2021 National University Wood Challenge. Source: Timberbiz
The challenge will award grants of up to $20,000 to each finalist team. The prize money will be used to fund the building, testing and prototyping of valuable and innovative products created from wood and wood fibre.
The challenge is aimed to promote using our forest resources smarter and to enhance community understanding of forestry. Within the Australian forest industry, there is a high volume of ‘lower value’ fibre that has great potential to be converted into high value products.
The challenge hopes to attract teams of university students and academics from a variety of disciplines, in order to increase the diversity of ideas and products proposed. Each team must have at least one member of the university’s academic staff and at least one student with a maximum of five team members, from the same university.
The grant funding will support the finalist team’s initiative to create a novel and innovative product that will provide value, in the global setting. The entries will be judged by a panel of highly skilled forestry and business executives. The winning team will be announced in November with an additional $10,000 in prize money to develop their proposed prototype or project.
Key challenge dates: Entries Open:14/06/2021, Entries Close: 25/07/2021, Finalists announced: 10/08/2021, Prototypes to be submitted: 31/10/2021.
For more information: https://www.fwpa.com.au/news/national-university-wood-challenge.html
