Global collaborations: students from Peking University and U of T solve real-world design challenges

As President Meric Gertler arrived in China November 19 – on his first international visit as head of the University of Toronto – 16 U of T engineering students and four faculty members were completing a whirlwind trip to Beijing, the latest stage in their collaboration with Peking University (PKU).

The president's ten-day trip seeks to strengthen the University's ties with important partners in China – from distinguished alumni to leading academic institutions which collaborate with U of T on research and education.

The students' four-day visit comprised just one example of such a partnership and marked the first face-to-face meeting for capstone design project teams and their supervisors from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) and PKU. 

“The cross-cultural capstone is an exceptional opportunity for some of our brightest undergraduates to work with students abroad,” said Professor Kamran Behdinan, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada chair in multidisciplinary engineering design and coordinator of international capstone design projects.

Capstone design is a fourth-year course requirement, where students apply their disciplinary knowledge and skills to conduct an engineering design for an industry-based project. A total of five projects – three from MIE and two from PKU – are included in the cross-cultural branch of capstone, where the project is shared between two international universities. Led by U of T’s Behdinan and PKU professor Pingchou Han, students work on real-life challenges provided by companies such as GM, Bombardier, Litens and Siemens.

“The cross-cultural capstone design program is one of a number of exciting research opportunities in China for engineering students at U of T,” said Professor Jean Zu, chair of MIE. “This past summer, our first cohort of seven students took part in the GLOBEX program at PKU, which offers students an extraordinary global educational, research and professional experience.”

Through GLOBEX – the Global Educational Exchange Program – PKU undergraduates can spend one semester at U of T, while U of T undergrads can participate in an intensive four-week summer program at PKU. In the summer of 2013, U of T students at PKU took either a manufacturing course with Adjunct Professor Mike Munro or the solid mechanics course with Professor Shaker Meguid from MIE. Students also had the opportunity to enroll in another course taught by an instructor from one of the other universities participating in GLOBEX.

“PKU initiated the GLOBEX program a few years ago and participating universities included Stanford and Singapore University,” said Zu. “Last year, they extended the program to include U of T and Cambridge University.

“PKU is very selective, and only top universities participate, so the students are interacting with top-notch professors from around the world.”

GLOBEX offers MIE students the option of an intensive international summer experience, while the mandatory capstone course, now in its third year, ensures all MIE students experience what it is like to spend a year working on an international team with much of the work done via Skype, Zu said.

Since the start of the term, U of T student Sahil Gupta and his three MIE team members – Neel Bavishi, Andy Chen, and Zengjin Chen – have been communicating with their four PKU counterparts over Skype. Gupta, who had never been China, said he was excited to meet his capstone design project teammates on the other side of the world despite the long journey and inevitable jetlag.

“Our PKU teammates have to submit their own program deliverables, as do we, and it’s interesting to see what differences there are,” said Gupta (pictured second from right). 

His team’s project is a Portable Assisted Mobility Device (PAMD), a small, power-assisted vehicle that can transport an individual and small item of luggage, but is also lightweight enough to be taken on public transport and carried. Their project is also part of the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) global challenge, a two-year project for which U of T Engineering received PACE’s second place for industrial design.

“We’ve been reworking last year’s design and seeing if there are alternatives,” said Gupta. He and his teammates will develop a PAMD prototype this year.

“Getting a different perspective from external input can really change the way you think, and help you develop more ideas,” said Gupta. “Given how businesses operate today, we as engineers will work with more people globally.”

All teams presented their projects on November 17 and spent November 18 visiting local sites with their new PKU friends before returning to Canada.

The PKU students will visit Toronto in April, when they participate in final project presentations during the MIE Capstone Design Showcase.

The capstone and GLOBEX programs are just two examples of the collaborations between MIE and PKU, Zu said, pointing out that students from PKU also come to U of T for year-long exchanges “and next year, one of our MIE students will spend his third year at PKU.”

From research to student and faculty mobility to joint courses, U of T and China are collaborating across many disciplines. In addition to Peking University, U of T’s academic partners in the region include Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, the University of Hong Kong and the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences. Students and faculty collaborate across a variety of fields such as: neuroscience; nanotechnology; political science; biophysics; hematology; critical care medicine; cancer and diabetes.