(L-R): Maverick Schmit, Alex Muller, Valentin Ringlet; Credit: copyright : Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg

The Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg has announced that three young Luxembourg scietists - Maverick Schmit, Alex Muller and Valentin Ringlet - have won a prize for their 3-D printing project that prints concrete.

From 23 to 29 October 2017, the international pre-university scientific competition MOSTRATEC was held in Novo Hamburgo, in the south of Brazil. Luxembourg was one of the 20 countries represented, with two teams, one of which won a special mention from the jury.

The project "A Modular Concrete 3D Printer" was y three pupils from the Aline Mayrisch Lycée, who designed and created a special 3D printer that prints concrete objects, instead of plastic, the material used by traditional 3D printers. Their goal is to revolutionise the construction industry, by printing entire buildings made of concrete. Their multi-disciplinary project, combining mechanical engineering, electronics, computer science and materials science, has been supported by the University of Luxembourg and Paul Wurth SA, and qualified for MOSTRATEC at the 2017 Jonk Fuerscher National Competition. In the Brazilian contest, it made a strong impression on the public and the jury, which rewarded it with an honourable mention "for outstanding project".

The other project presented by the Luxembourg delegation was "Is school bad for the environment?", a project in which Madalena Oliveira, Ana Pereira and Mariana Rodrigues studied the environmental impact of their school, the Lycée Michel Lucius, whose teaching materials are all printed, and compared this scenario with a configuration in which students as teachers would only use digital media.