Faculty members in NDSU’s College of Engineering and Architecture have received a four-year $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).
NDSU and its project partners will pursue course and degree equivalence in the areas of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering with emphasis on renewable energy sources, as well as offering select engineering students the opportunity to study in Brazil as part of an exchange program. One of the program goals includes preparing engineers to solve energy problems from a transcontinental perspective.
Ivan T. Lima Jr., assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and faculty associate in the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, serves as principal investigator and project director. Robert Pieri, professor in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics; Rajesh Kavasseri, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering; and Kerri Spiering, director of the Office of International Programs, are collaborating as co-principal investigators on the four-year project titled "U.S.-Brazil Engineering Education Consortium on Renewable Energy."
The project is aimed at creating a self-sustainable exchange of faculty and students between U.S. and Brazilian institutions that have the potential to contribute toward diploma and professional registration equivalence in engineering and lead to an increase in trade between both countries.
Participating institutions in the consortium in the United States are NDSU as the lead institution, and Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Mich. In the U.S., 100 percent of the $200,000 project is financed with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education FIPSE program.
The project’s participating institutions in Brazil include Universidade Federal do Pará in Belém, State of Pará, the largest and the most influential institution in the Amazon region, and Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), in Campinas, state of São Paulo. Unicamp is a lead research university in Brazil that is responsible for 11 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded and 15 percent of the scientific production in Brazil. The Brazilian partners in the consortium are being funded by a $200,000 grant provided by the Brazilian Ministry of Education to support their institutions in this bi-national project.
For more information, contact Lima at 701-231-6728 or ivan.lima@ndsu.edu.