A new collaboration between the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus and the National University of Singapore (NUS) may result in an increasing number of new post-graduate students to the School of Engineering. This summer, four labs on campus welcomed students from NUS’s Engineering and Science Program (ESP) to participate in a 12-week internship. The ESP has only been in existence for 6-years and already approximately twenty-percent of their students are in the process of completing their doctorates at universities around the world.
As part of an initiative to increase global awareness of the School of Engineering, top administrators from the Okanagan have traveled extensively over the past few years to promote the campus. In the Spring of 2016, the School’s Associate Director, Rehan Sadiq, visited Singapore and a partnership was forged. That partnership resulted in four students from the National University of Singapore working with UBC Okanagan researchers to undertake research in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Thermo-Fluidics, Water Quality Engineering and Geo-Technical Engineering under the supervision of Joshua Brinkerhoff, Mina Hoorfar, Deborah Roberts and Sumi Siddiqua.
“It was a real eye opener for me to experience the scientific research and the different culture in Canada” says Zhi Hao Fang who worked in the Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab. “It was truly a memorable time that I shall treasure for a long time.”
The students were hard-working, exemplified by one student who worked up to and during his last day in Kelowna. Mina Hoorfar, professor and Director of The School o f Engineering says “these students got to experience the Okanagan and UBC, but most importantly, got to participate in some of the cutting-edge research we conduct on the Okanagan campus.” Hoorfar’s Advanced Thermo-Fluidic Laboratory played host to one of the students in the program, and she says she hopes to see additional participants in the coming years.
“Through this program, we give exceptional students a glimpse at what our University and our program has to offer to post-graduate students” says Sadiq. All four of the students who participated in the internship program are undergraduates and scholarship recipients at NUS.
Sadiq expects that the partnership between UBC Okanagan and NUS will continue with the vetting process becoming more selective and a focus on students striving for a post-graduate degree.
For more information please contact Ernest Goh, Engineering Instructor at 250-807-8863 or ernest.goh@ubc.ca