From June 19th to 30th, the summer program entitled “KIT Electronics Summer School 2017” was held by KIT’s Associate Professor Kazuo Takahashi, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, in collaboration with Professor Laifa Boufendi from University of Orleans – Polytech Orleans (France). A total of 35 students, including 7 students from Polytech Orleans, 2 from Justus-Liebig University Giessen (Germany), 17 from KIT and 9 students from Kazakhstan (who received support from the JST “Sakura Science Plan”), gathered for 2 weeks in the program.

Participating students were divided into nine teams and had the projects of “making something”, where they were building up systems using Arduino. Each team consisted of 3 to 4 different nationalities and the members had chances to debate, trial and error for making something, explore the city of Kyoto and present their results on the last day. They made systems for supporting and navigating tourists in Kyoto, and entertainments with games and gadgets. All the systems involved their ideas obtained in their lives and interaction among them and were so impressive as to express international collaboration.

In addition, on the fifth day, students from Kazakhstan had an opportunity to learn plasma engineering in the “Plasma Nanotechnology Seminar”, where Prof. Boufendi gave a lecture and guidance of laboratory works.

Students who participated from abroad stayed in the same dormitory and had chances to spend time together and deepen mutual exchange even outside of classes, including Japanese students. This year’s program, which was held for the second time, was carried out in a more open form widely inviting KIT students to participate. As a result, the number of participating universities and students significantly increased. As a model for practical international exchange, it is a leading internationalization project for KIT.

• Program orientation
• Lecture by Prof. Boufendi
• Work in teams
• Participating students and staff