Warwick have welcomed 10 Engineering undergraduates from the University of Michigan (UM) - Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) Joint Institute. The students spent three weeks at Warwick during which time they attended a Winter School on “Sustainable Cities and Infrastructures for Emergencies” for Humanitarian Engineers. Their stay also involved a cultural programme designed to provide an insight into our region’s heritage.

The University of Warwick is the only UK partner for the Winter Programmes of the UM-SJTU Joint Institute which aims to provide students with a short-term overseas study experience to complement their degree programmes.

This Winter School is an exciting development in an ongoing partnership with SJTU which has enabled several novel collaborations over the last five years in areas of mutual strength, including the recent English language training outreach programme in rural China. As part of Warwick’s Humanitarian Engineering initiative, eminent professionals delivered seminars;

• Vita Sanderson, Senior Consultant from the International Development team of Arup Group, delivered a seminar on how to make our cities more resilient. She challenged our understanding of resilience and depicted a futuristic view of “What can resilience look like?”.
• Sharron Duffy, Head of Transport Infrastructure Engineering from Transport for London (TfL) shared her perspectives on mobility systems and how to integrate them into a sustainable city.
• Belinda Mackay, City Planner from Mott MacDonald Group delivered a workshop on interdependency of systems in cities.
• Tom Newby, Head of Humanitarian, Care International UK, delivered seminars on shelters and immediate relief in the aftermath of disasters.

Dr Volkan Degirmenci, Director of International Collaborations in Engineering, who co-hosted the students commented;

"It has been a pleasure to teach such a talented group of international students in Humanitarian Engineering. They have worked alongside Warwick students and positively contributed to team challenges such as designing and testing concepts for an aid shelter.”

Humanitarian Engineering is an emerging field bringing students together from all disciplinary and professional backgrounds. The expertise and insight of multiple disciplines are combined in harmony to discover new and innovative solutions to the world's most pressing problems."

Dr Georgia Kremmyda, Director of Humanitarian Engineering at Warwick commented;

“Students are introduced to a great challenge of our current societies both in developing and developed countries: transforming our growing cities into sustainable living environments. They have been exposed to the planning and conceptual design of sustainable cities and infrastructure developments for densely populated low-income urban areas as well as the newly created city centres. I was excited to see the students’ growing enthusiasm and passion for Humanitarian Engineering during the Winter School!”

Mr Hanyun Zhao, Electrical and Computer Engineering, UM-SJTU JI, who took part in the winter school programme said;

"I have loved my time at Warwick and have found it really interesting to learn new concepts and techniques. It has been great to meet with the brilliant lecturers at Warwick as well as experts from all walks of life. I'm glad to get to know the Warwick students and we have really enjoyed working together. We were also given the opportunity to explore some of the local areas including Coventry Catherdral and Warwick Castle, and to join in with a Ceilidh folk dance evening at the Arts Centre, after which we happened to get a glimpse of a student fancy dress night! It’s been a brilliant experience”