The IIR International Congress of Refrigeration took place on August 21-25 in Paris. It was the perfect opportunity to present SophiA to the public! Various events were planned through the whole week. The IIR team held a booth with some SophiA prospectuses. The booth’s success gave strong visibility to SophiA’s roll-up banner. Oliver Schmid from…
The second edition of the International Sustainability Summer School is over! Forty students attended the summer school in Brașov, Romania, from July 24 to 28. It was organised jointly by two partners of the SophiA project, the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA) and the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (OST), and by…
From 24 to 26 June 2023, the World Refrigeration Day was held in Douala, Cameroon. This event was organised by the Association of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Professionals in Cameroon (APFCC) and the Union of African Associations of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Professionals (U-3ARC). This event, focusing on the theme “Refrigeration Speaks to Humanity,” emphasised…
SophiA at the ENRICH in Africa Center event On June 14th 2023, Kirsten Laaks, a Mechanical Engineer at Everflo was invited to the Inauguration ceremony of the ENRICH in Africa Center in Cape Town. She gave an opening speech about SophiA and Everflo, and she referred specifically to the Woman and Youth Led Initiatives. The…
SophiA at the Sustainable Places event SophiA participated in the Sustainable Places Conference from 14-16 June 2023. This year, the 11th edition of the Sustainable Places conference took place in Madrid, Spain, and online. Sustainable Places is a large platform bringing together actors from research and innovation projects contribution towards building sustainably: from energy…
SophiA participation to board of coordinators meeting in Brussels On the 5th of June, the SophiA coordinators were invited to the Green Deal Board of Coordinators meeting organized by the Green Deal Support Office (GDSO) in Brussels. At the beginning, it was made clear to the coordinators of the 73 EU-funded projects how important your…
SophiA consortium met in Cape Town Held from March 15 to 17, 2023, the 18-month SophiA progress meeting took place in hybrid format between South Africa and Germany. The majority of the SophiA consortium partners met in Cape Town, South Africa, in the facilities of Everflo, and those partners who could not travel joined the…
SophiA Water Technologies for Drinking and Deionised Water Poster Presentation The 40th Euromembrane Conference in Sorrento, Italy was attended by the Water Technology team of HKA from 21st – 24th November 2022. The Horizon 2020 EU funded project SophiA was presented by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jan Hoinkis, his team member Sneha De and SophiA’s advisory board…
COP 27 has marked the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UNFCCC in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) from 6-20 November 2022. SophiA was also theret! One of the main outcomes of COP27 is the establishment of a loss and damage fund to save livelihoods and support low- and middle-income economies qualified to be as the…
On 16-18 November 2022, the German Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Association (DKV) held its RACHP Conference in Magdeburg, which was attended by 114 participants. At the DKV Conference 2022, Oliver Schmid and Elena Melito, students at the HKA university, presented the SophiA project The three fantastic days included a student event where eleven students presented…
On Monday 10 October 2022, a physical SophiA meeting took place between the teams of HKA, SPF-OST and Operieren in Afrika. The Director of Léo hospital, Omar Ouedraogo, and one surgeon of the hospital of Operieren in Afrika, Clarisse Judith, travelled from Burkina Faso for this purpose. Additionally, the German technician of the NGO, Horst…
On October 11-13, 2022, the Chillventa world’s leading exhibition for refrigeration technology took place in Nuremberg (Germany). Most of SophiA’s German partners were present at the stands of HKA and IIR which were located close to each other in Hall 9. The Eveflo partner also came from South Africa for this occasion. The brand new…
On 25-29 July 2022, the SophiA partners met at the International Summer School at the OST Rapperswil-Jona campus and it was all about sustainability! The event was held for the first time by the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA), the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (OST) in Rapperswil, and the Transylvanian University…
A very interactive SophiA workshop took place on the first day of the 15th IIR-Gustav Lorentzen Conference on Natural Refrigerants (GL 2022), in Trondheim (Norway) on June 13-15, 2022. SophiA partners (HKA and IIR) explained the benefits of this European Commission funded project on the African populations but also the complexity and constraints of CO2…
On April 13, 2022, during the 7th IIR International Conference on Sustainable Development and the Cold Chain (ICCC 2022), the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), in collaboration with the Institute of Refrigeration (IoR, UK), organised an online workshop entitled “Projects on clean and efficient refrigeration solutions for food and healthcare in developing countries“, which was…
Our partner, the 2iE Institute, participated in the SICRO international exhibition of air conditioning and refrigeration in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from March 3 to 5, 2022 and promoted SophiA on the 2iE stand. 2iE presented the SophiA project during the opening session panel.
Francis Kéré won the Pritzker, Architecture Prize in 2022. Francis Kéré is the architect who designed the new hospital in Léo, Burkina Faso where the first SophiA system will be installed. Congratulations to Francis Kéré! For more information, you can read articles in Le Monde and The Guardian.
SophiA took part in the 2022 ASHRAE Winter Conference & AHR Expo in Las Vegas. Didier Coulomb, Director General of the International Institute of Refrigeration, was present at the project booth to tell more about the SophiA project and its main objectives. With over 50,000 members from more than 132 nations, ASHRAE is a diverse…
Our partner HKA participated in the clustering meeting “Energy research projects in cooperation with Africa”, organised on the occasion of the inauguration of the EurAfrica Institute. Oliver Schmid, the SophiA project coordinator at HKA participated in the ʺEnergy research projects in cooperation with Africa” clustering meeting organised by CINEA – European Climate Infrastructure and Environment…
Our partner Makerere University launched the international multidisciplinary project “Sustainable Off-grid Solutions for Pharmacies and Hospitals in Africa” (SophiA). On this occasion, Vice-Chancellor Barnabas Nawangwe underlined the importance for Makerere University to participate in the SophiA project. The grant given to Makerere is an opportunity to address the issues faced by health centres in Uganda.…
Thanks to a donation campaign, a total amount of 2360 Euros has been handed over to the family of Prof. Noble Ephraim Banadda. “Besides the pride that we can actually start this international research project together today“, said project leader Prof. Dr. habil. Michael Kauffeld at the SophiA kick-off meeting at the HKA in October…
SophiA is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and coordinated by Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HKA). With a budget of 8 millions euros over four years, SophiA will develop containerised solutions for hospitals using natural refrigerants, solar thermal and photovoltaics to enable more and more African people to…
