KIT held its first summer program, “KIT Electronics Summer School 2016,” July 4th to 18th. It was organized by KIT’s Assoc. Prof. Kazuo Takahashi, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, in collaboration with Prof. Laifa Boufendi from University of Orleans – Polytech Orleans. Participating were two Orleans students already at KIT, six Japanese students and three students who came from Orleans especially for this program.

Participants were divided into five teams to tackle the assignment: create something by programming a system with Arduino (an open-source electronic prototyping platform for creating interactive electronic objects). Each team consisted of a mixture of nationalities. They discussed their ideas in the classroom, repeated trial and error attempts to conceive something and explored the city of Kyoto. The combination of these activities led to the development of an alarm clock to make morning routines more enjoyable, a campus exploration game, a Japanese-French-English translator and other “firsts.” Differences in team member language and culture worked in their favor and resulted in interesting and unique proposals.

Taking the opportunity of the summer school, the “Plasma Cafe” was opened on its fifth day, where Prof. Boufendi gave a lecture entitled “The Plasma” and participants enjoyed it with coffees and juices in a friendly manner. He spoke enthusiastically about the basic concepts of plasma, its applications and future.

This summer school was a Model Globalization Laboratory Project funded by the KIT Top Global University Project. It provided a working example of the way close partnerships between the faculty members of two universities can be developed into meaningful student collaboration. We anticipate further student mobility and that this two week program will become an annual event as of next year. This program was held at the hottest time of the year in what is said to be the hottest city in Japan. Luckily, there was a respite as this period coincided with the Gion Festival, one of Kyoto’s three major festivals. This provided participants with a rare glimpse at an authentic example of Kyoto culture. We were pleased to hear that the French students would like to come back to Kyoto.

• Individual team discussions
• One of the “Somethings”
• Final presentation
• Participants and staff