On October 1 2019, we welcomed our second cohort of MSc Humanitarian Engineering Students to Warwick! This is a truly interdisciplinary group as students have previously studied Business, Chemistry, Engineering, Global Sustainable Development, History, Human Resource Management, Liberal Arts, Life Sciences, Management, Physics, Psychology, Politics and International Relations, Social Work, Sociology, among other subjects. We wish them a successful and fulfilling academic year.

Humanitarian Engineering: Ethics, Theory, Practice (module IL909) is the first module on our MSc which introduces students to humanitarian engineering from ethical, cultural, and practical perspectives. Students received lectures from esteemed colleagues in Engineering and Law and welcomed guest speakers from the University of Cambridge and RedR UK. On Thursday 10 October, 2019 students got certified in an Introduction to Humanitarian Standards and Principles through training delivered by RedR UK and heard first-hand experiences from field practitioners, Imogen Wall and Roba Suleiman.

For the second year the School of Engineering is excited to have held a successful humanitarian engineering residential course on campus, 8-11 July 2019. The course was created and led by Professor Georgia Kremmyda and run in collaboration with Smallpeice Trust.

For the four days 60 Year 12 pupils joined us to experience how humanitarian engineering can tackle global challenges related to disasters, sustainable cities, energy, water and global health.

The participants attended talks, workshops and laboratory demonstrations delivered by leading Warwick academics from the School of Engineering, the Warwick Medical School, the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning, and the Institute for Global Sustainable Development. The participants carried out practical humanitarian activities in the Engineering Build Space to experience how it is to tackle complex and emerging real-life challenges.
The course was proudly sponsored by The Ove Arup Foundation.

On 16 May 2019 our humanitarian engineering students had the opportunity to build a variety of emergency shelters on campus by using naturally sourced materials such as bamboo. They had the opportunity to work as a member of a small team to efficiently construct, in the field, an emergency shelter, practicing every aspect of the construction process, from preparing the materials provided to assembling structural frames and attaching roof covers. You can watch a video of our field course here!!

On May 14th students received training in the Essentials of Humanitarian Practice by RedR UK who provide expert support to solve humanitarian crises. In the session on ‘Individual Responsibility’, they considered some of the challenging situations that aid workers can face and the responsibility of the individual to act in an appropriate manner. Responding appropriately to a particular situation requires certain personal skills and by using role plays the students were able to practise these skills and identify potential coping strategies.

Yagmur Masmas, student of the MSc Humanitarian Engineering with Sustainability , gave a talk about the challenges and rewards of opening her own business (Greenstory) on 30 April 2019 at the European Parliament, as part of the EU Youth Week. Yagmur shared her experience from the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme. The programme is an EU funded exchange programme in which young entrepreneurs receive guidance from established entrepreneurs living and working in a different EU country. Her talk aimed at motivating young entrepreneurs to start their own sustainable business and shared her experience of the challenges and rewards she faced when establishing Greenstory for creating positive impact.

Yagmur's interest is in sustainable innovation. She co-founded the company Greenstory , which markets erasable notebooks and planners, vegan leather and zero waste products. Greenstory aims to positively impact the world by allowing customers to live greener and by integrating sustainability throughout the company’s value chain.

Yagmur Masmas, MSc Humanitarian Engineering with Sustainability at the University of Warwick (Left); Marco Lacuitto, Session Moderator and Deputy Secretary General and EU Project Manager at the Belgio-Italian Chamber of Commerce, Katerina Nejdlova, Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Project Manager European Commission, Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (right)

Congratulations to Dr Georgia Kremmyda on her promotion to Professor and for being awarded the 2019 Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE)!

Amongst many impressive achievements, Professor Kremmyda has led on the development of the interdisciplinary MSc programme and convenes our modules on Humanitarian Engineering: Ethics, Theory and Practices; Sustainable Cities and Infrastructures for Emergencies and One Humanity; Shared Responsibility.

Today Dr Elena Riva who leads our Water and Environmental Management module will collect her Butterworth Memorial Teaching Award

Elena has also been awarded the Warwick Award for Teaching and Learning (WATE) award, which recognises staff who have made a difference in learning and teaching and reward outstanding, inspirational teachers.

We think encouraging an early interest in our global community and the roles we can play is vitally important. Last week we had the great pleasure of hosting 60 girls in years 10 and 11 to come and complete the Smallpeice Trust Humanitarian Engineering Residential.

APPLYING FOR ACCOMMODATION 2018/2019 -

New Postgraduates

APPLY NOW: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/accommodation/studentaccommodation/apply/18/new/pg

To make an application for postgraduate accommodation you will need a full time, full year firm or conditional offer of study at Warwick. To make your application you will need:

• Your Warwick University number (this can be found in your offer email)
• To have fully read and understood our allocation policy and accommodation options for new postgraduate students for the 2018/19 academic year
• Applied through the appropriate process if you have any specific accommodation requirements, including health and disability needs

The deadline for priority applications is 31 July 2018 so please make sure you have submitted your application by this date.

Hear why our applicants have chosen to study with us for the exciting new MSc Humanitarian Engineering.

Are you ready to see differently, think differently and DO DIFFERENTLY?

Send us an email hum.eng@warwick.ac.uk to explore the unique opportunity to study differently.

You could receive £5000 towards the cost of studying with us, with one of 20 scholarships!

Application deadline is the 29th June, so you will need to apply soon.

You can find more information here.

Humanitarian Engineering- Promotional Filming

This week we are excited to be partnering with a creative company in producing some short promotional videos for our Humanitarian Engineering course.

We hope that these videos will give our audience a greater understanding of our vision and what we expect our students will achieve. We look forward to presenting them in the coming weeks- watch this space!

You can now follow our Academic Projects Manager Hannah @HHCoping on Twitter to hear more about #humanitarianengineering and join the conversation.

Use the hashtag #IATLhumans to spread the word one tweet at a time!

Will you be part of the diversity? Our latest application brings our total number of nationalities represented to 15! With their varied academic & work experiences, it looks a very diverse cohort!

We are still accepting applications, join us to become confident when conversing and interacting through multiple perspectives and develop your capacity to think critically and intelligently when approaching complex global issues.

Tesco launches "unforgettable bag" in Kuala Lumpur in an effort to shift away from single-use plastic bags and reduce pollution.

We follow this idea of what our global responsibility is to respond to the humanitarian challenges we face.

Mike Penrose, Executive Director for Unicef UK recently wrote a blog entry for the Huffington Post Entitled “In Yemen, Another Generation Is Being Lost To Conflict”. Shockingly it highlights almost half a million children in Yemen are facing the harsh reality of being stripped of their chance for education due to the conflict.

This topic is explored more in our Humanitarian Law module taught by Professor Andrew Williams, School of Law.

Image Provided by Felton Davis E339 Child in Ruins via CC BY 2.0

A child walking in the rubble of a building hit in an airstrike in Taiz, Yemen. Photo by Ahmad Al-Basha/Agence France-Presse

Our Warwick Retail Group have pledged to reduce single-use plastic, starting with teaming up with students to give away free reusable water bottles, and removing disposable cups from water dispensers.

What would you like to see the University of Warwick do next to help make a more sustainable campus? What would you do as a student?

Our core Global Health module, specifically exploring research by Chanuki Seresinhe (WBS) on the impact of scenic environments on our health and happiness, and the importance of how including beautiful natural elements, such as trees, within a city plan can improve mental health and wellbeing, reducing the stress and anxiety and make a big impact on the health of those leading an urban life.