Innovative engineering course at King’s College London integrates eco-design practices to prepare students for real-world challenges

London – Today, PicoNext announced a collaboration with Dr Francesco Ciriello at King’s College London (King’s), a U.K.-based research institution ranked among the top universities globally, to enhance engineering education through the integration of Digital Product Passports (DPPs) into its curriculum. As sustainability becomes an essential aspect of product design, King’s Department of Engineering has launched an immersive course that equips students with the tools to create and communicate sustainable product attributes using DPPs.

In the Computational Design for Manufacturing course, students engage in a hands-on Design for Sustainability workshop focused on eco-design principles and the creation of Digital Product Passports. And under the guidance of Dr Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, and an expert in project-based learning and computational engineering design, students learn the importance of sustainability and compliance with European regulations.

A Holistic Approach to Product Design
Students in the course apply engineering principles through brainstorming sessions, an iterative design process, and prototyping in King's state-of-the-art lab facilities. They also utilize gamification techniques to enhance learning outcomes, engaging with a color-printed card deck that distills key concepts from the European Union’s new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

Because Digital Product Passports are a key part of the ESPR legislation, a core element of the Design for Manufacturing workshop was to have students create DPPs to communicate the product details that they had spent weeks working on.

Creating Digital Product Passports Using AI
As part of the curriculum, students create Digital Product Passports to effectively communicate product and sustainability details. They use the PicoNext AI Assistant to upload raw data and notes about their designs and then use templates aligned with ESPR reporting requirements. The PicoNext AI Assistant enables students to quickly generate summary data that they can edit and publish in the PicoNext DPP Planner as part of their final coursework submission.

“Preparing world-class students for the rigours of real-world engineering, so they can make a difference from day-one, is an important part of the educational programme here at King’s. By integrating technology that helps embed tenets of sustainable design and compliance, collaborating with PicoNext helps us make our students better engineers who can be agile in a shifting legislative landscape,” said Ciriello.

Driving Real-World Impact
This educational collaboration prepares students to navigate engineering trade-offs through a lens of eco-design. By incorporating DPPs into their learning experience, students leave equipped to make evidence-based engineering decisions that advance sustainability in their future careers.

Quotes
“Creating Digital Product Passports is an important way to communicate and critique its return-on-investment (ROI), and we wanted our students to be well-versed in best practices to do so – especially as new regulations roll out over the next months and years,” said Francesco Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, King’s College London. “Using generative AI in PicoNext, we could leverage a small quantity of product attributes in a data lakehouse to create an attractive DPP customer-facing landing page, in no time at all.”

“With our collaboration with Dr Ciriello and the students at King’s College London, we’re excited to lead the way in integrating Digital Product Passports into engineering education,” said Dave Dickson, founder of PicoNext. “By harnessing the power of generative AI, PicoNext empowers the next generation of engineers to not only understand the importance of sustainability but also to implement it in product design decisions. This initiative is essential to prepare students to tackle the growing demands of sustainability and regulatory compliance in a fast-changing market.”

Resources
Case study. Read a case study about the PicoNext + King’s College London collaboration at https://piconext.com/customers/training-next-generation-sustainability-kings-college-london/