"It's about climate, economy - and the future!"

Ahmed Amana, doctoral student at JTH, will help the industry get a grip on all the new knowledge required for the transition to a more circular economy.
For example, how are different materials affected by being reused - and what are the costs of different circular alternatives in production?

"It's about the climate, the economy - and the future," explains Ahmed Amana, describing the importance of his research as a GRACE doctoral student since last fall. The journey towards the EU's goal of a climate-neutral continent by 2050 will be a real challenge for industry and a lot of new knowledge will be needed to develop new strategies for a strong and innovative circular economy.

How to keep products in use for as long as possible? And what is the cost of repairing or reusing compared to using the product until the end of its life cycle and discarding it?
"Our goal is to find tools to evaluate different aspects," Ahmed explains enthusiastically when we meet for coffee at the JTH premises.

In addition, a host of new rules await when production is to be designed as a cycle - how such information is to be collected, structured and updated is also part of In2Circ's mission.

Dramatic background

The industry's path towards the European Green Deal is of course exciting, as is the GRACE project In2Circ, of which Ahmed Amana is a member. But he also has a different, transformative journey behind him. Together with his wife and two brothers, he came to Sweden in the so-called refugee wave of 2015 after leaving his native Iraq. Educated at the university in his home province in the center of the country, Ahmed worked as a welding engineer on oil pipelines for a Chinese company - in the office but also in the oil field. He also did CAD drawings at the university. But despite good work, the situation became untenable.

"You couldn't talk freely," says Ahmed, who decided to leave the country whose roots he still misses.

"I knew nothing about Sweden and people said it was cold. But I wanted to find freedom - and I found it here."

A lifeline comes full circle

Once in Sweden, Ahmed's education was validated and he was able to study further to become a manufacturing engineer in Trollhättan, which has now led him to a doctoral position at Jönköping University. He has also had time for SFI training and to obtain a Swedish driving license. There is no doubt that this is a goal-oriented person - as is Ahmed's wife who works as a biomedical analyst. Ahmed commutes to Gothenburg where the family now also consists of two children. He likes meatballs and tacos, and has made Swedish friends, he says. The fact that strength training is an interest is evident under his shirt - Ahmed lifts 150 kilos in bench press. The focus of the GRACE and In2Circ work is currently on interviews with eight different companies to find out what their circular strategies look like - and how they can be improved.

"There is a lack of information on how the linear concept can become circular - we will help fill those gaps!"