Sustainable Product Development Through the Interdisciplinary Study Programme Engineering of Renewable Energy Systems

Many study programmes on Engineering of Renewable Energy Systems appear worldwide as a consequence of the rising demand for specialists in this field, starting from research and development of materials, products and technologies to the renewable energy systems design, implementation, operation, maintenance and recycling. Such a study program has been developed for the first time in Romania in the Transilvania University of Brasov. It has been included in the Romanian official nomenclature of study programs in higher education and the first courses started in 2007. A complex training framework has been developed over the last sixteen years covering a wide range of directions (materials development, product design, virtual prototyping, numerical simulations, optimization and experimental validation) to achieve advanced solutions to support sustainable communities based on renewable energy systems implemented in the energy efficient built environment. The interdisciplinarity required by such a study programme is discussed in the paper as well as the new emerging needs of this profession.