Cooperation with Korean University Adds to International Exchange

A new international exchange agreement was signed between the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Pusan National University (PNU) in the Busan province of the Republic of Korea. This agreement is yet another in a series of international cooperative exchanges with the department that share faculty, research activities, mutual recognition of courses, student exchange and shared internships. Other international cooperative exchange programs in progress include agreements between The Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) and Hanyang University in Korea and also with the Technical University in Wroclaw, Poland.

Last year the department signed a major education and energy research collaboration exchange agreement with The Petroleum Institute (PI) of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

This five-year Ph.D. program agreement with PNU is funded in part by the Brain Korea 21 (BK21) Program, a human resource development program recently initiated by Korea's Ministry of Education. The Ministry has targeted what it considers the seven most important fields in science and technology necessary to enhance Korea’s competitiveness in the 21st century.

Maryland faculty currently selected for this exchange include Professors Avram Bar-Cohen, Balakumar Balachandran, Bongtae Han, Michael Zachariah, Elisabeth Smela, & S.K. Gupta. Representatives from PNU arrive in May to discuss program details, goals, and to visit various engineering labs.

Published April 26, 2007