university of malta Archives – Page 2 of 42

When Automation Gets Smart: Lessons from the SMARTSPACK Journey

Manufacturing has come a long way since Ford’s production lines. Modern manufacturing is becoming smarter. But making food package manufacturing smarter presents a host of challenges that the SMARTSPACK project needed to navigate through.

A Land of Honey

As part of the BEE-OPTECH4Honey project, master’s student Matthew Calleja is seeking to demonstrate that Maltese thyme honey is worthy of a protected status. In discussion with THINK’s Jonathan Firbank, Calleja shares how best to prove it and the benefits PGI status can bring.

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Can Economics Protect the Environment?

How much is Comino worth? €2,000,000? €20,000,000? Surely it is priceless? Yet, when it comes to economics and policy, priceless often means worthless. THINK examines how putting a price on the environment could actually protect it.

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What Monkeys Taught Us About Love and Loneliness

Science has quite a few skeletons tucked away in its closet; small, rhesus monkey-shaped ones. The results of these morbid experiments have moulded how we understand loneliness and love. What happened exactly?

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Giving Plastic Waste a Second Life Through 3D Printing

Europe’s packaging industry drives 40% of plastic demand, yet Malta’s recycling rates remain alarmingly low. While 3D printing with recycled plastic offers a sustainable, low-carbon solution, repeated recycling degrades the material’s internal structure. Dr Zunaida Binti Zakaria explores this challenge through infrared thermal imaging to unlock the secrets of plastic crystallisation and bridge the gap between waste and reliable production.

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From Venice to Malta: MALETH Finds Its Home

Celebrating Maltese artists and their work, the Malta Arts Council’s RETOLD initiative brings the MALETH exhibition back from the Venice Biennale to its homeland. Featuring powerful works by Vince Briffa and Trevor Borg, this series invites local audiences to engage with themes of identity, refuge, and belonging through contemporary Maltese art.

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The EDUWEAR Project: Connecting Rehabilitation and Engineering Across Europe

In a country with more metal bands per capita than anywhere else, you’d expect to hear sick guitar solos and wicked vocals around every corner. But for a group of students in Oulu, Finland, the only sound was the buzz of 3D printers, building the next generation of wearable rehabilitation tech.

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Project HESS: Storing Tomorrow’s Energy

Hybrid Energy Storage Systems is carrying out research on the conversion of surplus renewable energy into hydrogen. This is an increasingly important means of reducing wasted energy, as Malta invests heavily into renewables. Jonathan Firbank speaks with project investigator Prof. Ing. John Licari about this project and Malta’s changing energy landscape.

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Are Solar Panels Cool Enough?

Solar photovoltaic panels are a fantastic invention; they can turn abundant solar energy into electricity. Moreover, they provide shading on building roofs, reducing the heat that penetrates from direct sunlight. Amazing. But, there is one slight hitch – as the panels heat up, they become less and less efficient. A team of researchers at UM are looking into an innovative way to cool PV panels and the roof under the waxing sun.

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In Wine, and Blockchain, We Trust

A bottle of wine goes through many steps before it reaches the glass. Starting from the grape, it is monitored, barrelled, bottled, registered, regulated, stored, moved, and sold. At each stage, people rely on trust instead of checking every detail. This can lead to issues such as counterfeit bottles, lost records, and questions from buyers about the wine’s origin. The main challenge is making wine traceable without adding cost or slowing down the process. Prof. Joshua Ellul and Prof. Gordon Pace at the University of Malta, and their team, are working on this problem.

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