This International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) project aims to provide exciting international research experiences for American students, both undergraduate and graduate students, to carry out international collaborative research in well-known Universities in East Asia countries, such as China, Japan, and South Korea, for at least 8 weeks during the summers. The objective of the IRES summer programs is to provide future American engineers and early-career researchers a global perspective and opportunities for their professional growth through meaningful international cooperative research training, networking, and mentoring. The technical themes of this IRES project are on renewable energy and environmental sustainability with special emphasis on wind turbine aeromechanics and biomass processing technology.

With this IRES program, the PIs have proactively recruited over 20 American students, including 4 female, 3 Latino, and 1 African American student, to gain "hands-on" research experience in the PIs’ research laboratories by conducting innovative research pertinent to the technical themes of this IRES program. Some basic functions of the proposed research topics do not require sophisticated skills and were broken into small projects suitable for undergraduate students. The undergraduate research assistants are also invited to attend the weekly research group meetings to have intensive interactions and communications with the PIs, postdocs, graduate students and other research staff members. Through interacting with the PIs and other research personnels, the students were provided with “on-the-job” training to learn basic research and communications skills, more importantly, be inspired by research and discovery.  Among them, 14 American students, including 5 graduate students and 9 undergraduate students, were selected to carry out international collaborative research at North China Electric Power University (NCEPU) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in China, the University of Tokyo (U-Tokyo) in Japan, and Pusan National University (PNU) in South Korea for 8 weeks in the summers.  The IRES students were separated into “wind energy track” and “biomass track” based on their preferences.

In addition to working in the laboratories of the foreign hosting professors to conduct innovative research pertinent to renewable energy and environmental sustainability, the IRES students were also arranged to participate various social and culture exchanging activities, such as orientation social, lunchtime seminars/meetings, Chinese/Japanese/Korean language and culture training, and field trips to visit well-known industrial and historical sites during their visit to the foreign universities. Such arrangements would enhance student-faculty and student-student interactions to help the IRES students to build their personal friendship and professional connections with participating hosting professors, staff members, and their students as well as among the IRES participants themselves on which to build their professional networking for future collaborations. This project brings together IRES participants, involved professors and their graduate/undergraduate students with multi-cultural backgrounds in a multi-level learning experience infused with the excitement of discovery.

New research findings derived from this IRES program have been disseminated widely to the communities of interest in the forms of publishing research papers on scientific journals, making presentations on national/international conferences, and leveraging social media tools to post visualization images and interesting animations of the significant research results. Various outreach activities, such as developing introductory seminars about renewable energy and environmental sustainability and giving lab tours to local K-12 students and their teachers, were also pursued to impart the public a greater awareness of renewable energy and environmental sustainability and their importance to our daily lives. 

Last Modified: 09/18/2024
Modified by: Hui Hu