Our partner university, Universitas Gadjah Mada led an International Summer Course on Humanitarian Engineering focusing on the Role of Engineers and Scientists During Pandemic Era in July this year. 137 students from ten different countries came together to develop and share their knowledge and enthusiasm for humanitarian matters in engineering. 

This summer course was organised by Committee chair Dr Intan Supraba from Universitas Gadjah Mada, supported by Erasmus+ ENHANCE with Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Mara, also co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union. The summer course was held from 5^th to 17^th July 2021 and invited 28 speakers including one from Germany, seven from Indonesia, two from Japan, ten from Malaysia, one from New Zealand, three from Singapore, two from the United Kingdom, one from the United States of America, and one from Vietnam.

This summer course was targeted for Undergraduate and Graduate Students who have background or encouraging their enthusiasm in the study of engineering (in all departments/subjects) and scientists, especially those who are interested in the role of engineers and scientists during pandemic era of COVID-19. In addition, students who were willing to broaden their window of knowledge into cross-discipline and inter-discipline in terms of humanitarian engineering are also welcome. The lectures covered various topics from tsunami preparedness in Indonesia, development of chemical sensors and invention of GeNose to detect Covid-19 in Indonesia, post disaster housing reconstruction during Covid-19 pandemic till Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for improving disaster resilience.

There were 137 students registered for the event, of which 62 came from Malaysia, 29 from Indonesia, 21 from Vietnam, 16 from Taiwan, three from India, two from Pakistan, one from Yemen, one from United Arab Emirates, one from Nigeria, and one from Ghana. Those students come from various backgrounds such as Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. The purpose of this summer courses is to introduce various topics related to humanitarian matters, with a hope that later they can apply the knowledge in their near future career.