International collaboration on delivery of the Global Engineering Design Studio

UCL, with McMaster, McGill University, Monash University, University of Auckland, University of Southern California, and University of Toronto have partnered to deliver the Global Engineering Design Studio (GEDS) programme.

Professor Emanuela Tilley (Director of the IEP) and Dr Fiona Truscott (Lecturer, IEP Engineering Challenges Module Lead) are working with colleagues on GEDS, which this year focuses on Sustainable Cites and Communities – UN Sustainable Development Goal. The focus will be on three challenges; Clean Water and Sanitation, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; and Life on Land.

The programme is the result of a strategic collaboration among some of the most progressive and innovative faculties and schools of engineering in the world. Dr Fiona Truscott on this new programme:

“One silver lining of all the changes we’ve had to make in the past couple of years, is the increase in international collaboration – if we all have to be online anyway, why not include people from all over the world? The international partners involved are all leaders in Engineering Education and have project work running through their programme. With all the work we’ve done to move our project-based teaching online, could we extend this beyond our individual universities and give our students the opportunity to develop their skills and gain experience in a global setting – in what is the new normal. 

For me this has been a fantastic opportunity to bring our expertise in large scale project work and social impact into this programme and find out the commonalities, and differences, in our approaches and contexts. One of the project areas is infrastructure and the problems that come up in large scale public transport – apparently snow is a big issue for buses in Hamilton, Canada, but London is the only place that has to deal with plague pits when building a new tube line!

I’m excited to see what our teams come up with and how they approach the different problems we’ve given them”.