Coming to Lisbon, Portugal, you see all the joys of the nice sunny weather. Known for its sunny weather throughout the whole year, it’s one of the top tourist destinations in Europe. One blog post is definitely way too short to highlight Lisbon, I will just say that there is something for everyone. 

One of the best known places nearby is the huge beach Carcavelos. After arrival in Lisbon, that will be for sure among the first places that you will visit and will come to it, again and again.

No-one complains about the great climate, and there is interesting things from architecture, art, culture, sport and music events, and many other things. If by some chance you get bores in Lisbon (which is both theoretically and practically impossible :D), you can go and explore some places nearby, such as Sesimbra. Going to a distant beach, can be a nice way to have one lovely day outside the city crowd.

My personal passion are ships, so I take every opportunity to spend time on them, or to go to museums related to them. 

And being known as the country with probably the biggest naval tradition, Portugal is the place where you can find everything you want about ships.

For sure you will find a lot of museums in Portugal on all possible thematics. I will recommend you Museu da Marina in Belem, as a place which can't be missed. It's my favorite one. 

Aa yeah, this post started with football J Well, for all the football fans, you will have plenty of fun around. I got the opportunity to watch a lot of matches in both countries, and was absolutely delighted with that. However watching Benfica matches is just wonderful experience and something that any football enthusiast can't afford to skip.

Well, as I wrote in the beginning of the first part, this is merely a brief preview of the attractions in these two countries. There is much much more to be done and written for. Once again Poland and Portugal are equalized. This comparison reminds me about the football match they played, and once again it's difficult to say if someone is better, or just say that both countries are great.

I hope that the new students from CFAFE program will find this useful and will have an idea what they might expect and do during their studies.

Last times, these two countries played a football match on The European Championship (France 2016), it was so tight that it ended up on penalties. Let’s see how they fare in performance for student life J

As this was meant to be done in one blog post, I soon realized that the space won’t be enough, so I decided to make it in two parts. While doing that, I realized (once again), that I can’t present all what I want and find important, so for sure there will be additional work on this topic, just remains to be seen if it will be again on blog or maybe through some video.

Comparing country from north east of Europe to one from south-west is not an easy task. By default difference is huge here. Perhaps direct comparison might not be so helpful here, so I go by displaying the unique sides of both countries.

I spent one year in the south part of Poland, in the Silesian Voivodeship (polish term for province). This region is well known for the vast industrial tradition and the high level of development, due to the competitive industry. It is very well connected with transport infrastructure to all the major cities of the nearby countries such as Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria.

Although we were located in Gliwice, Krakow was quite close, and because of the many events organized, we were going there very often. The Rynek (square) on a sunny day is something that absolutely can’t be skipped.

Before going abroad, it is a good idea to check the local places available first. We were lucky to have the mountains nearby. Ski centers such as Szcyrk, Wisla Malinka and Zakopane, were very close to both centers for InnoEnergy - Gliwice and Krakow.

Although I come from a southern country, I love winter - especially with a lot of snow. The winter period in Poland provided some great experiences and memories.

Being in this region, you are assured to have a lot of snow in the winter – and all the joy that comes with it. Enjoying the snow, and all the winter fun, with prices much lower compared to similar places in other European countries, is something you can’t afford to miss!

This was just a brief display of some of the activities outside of the study program during my stay in Poland. It is up to the upcoming students to decide if they have similar preferences, or they would prefer to experience and share other types of activities. Without any doubt, Poland has a lot of interesting activities to offer, and I am sure that the students from the new CFAFE intake won't be bored there ;) 

Are you a summer or winter type of person? While being on this program (CFAFE), you can be both J

Stay tuned here, to see the case for Portugal ;) 

How lucky are you to spend time with your favorite people? Enjoying a few days with them hanging around under the sunshine of Lisbon. Have a chat in the morning while breakfast. Yes, I have been lucky to be with SELECT family again in Lisbon for Spring seminar 2017 between the period of 8th and 11th of May in the university of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST).

Vice president of the IST international affairs, Prof. Luis Miguel Silveira have welcomed students and teachers to the event with SELECT coordinators. Director of Infrastructure and Networks, Prof. Jorge Esteves and Eng. Cláudio Casimiro delivers invaded talks regarding the topics of “Energy Union and Regulation” and “Energy efficiency for business competitiveness” respectively. The first day dinner, EDP & KIC InnoEnergy evening was held in Museu DA Electricidade which is a great technical power plant environment for the engineers who are really loving with power sector with shorter presentations on few startups such as Power, C2C, Heaboo and Addvolt.

For the second day Prof. Ivanka Visnjic, professor of ESADE have delivered a course on “Design Thinking” for first year student. Further “Dealing with Intellectual Property Rights” and “Digital Marketing” courses have delivered from the professors of ESADE Prof. Carles Puente and Prof. David Lopez respectively for the second years. ESADE sessions have conducted as an interactive group work and practical sessions was really helpful for the qualitative absorption and better understanding of the contents of the course.

First year and Second year students Project in Energy Systems Analysis (PoY) and Integrated project of the year in sustainable energy (IPoY) presentations were delivered by the final day (11th of May) of the program and second year student poster session of thesis is conducted for the brief their studio works for the first years and teachers. The poster session was a great opportunity and guide for the first year student to make their decisions while choosing the correct path towards the success research.

Since the Fall seminar which journey starts from the Stockholm and we had a wonderful time in Germany kickoff, ESADE business school in Spain. The final event of the academic year Spring seminar in Portugal was ended in the restaurant “COIMBRA TABERNA” farewell party which was a great enjoyable moment of my life, I guess it is a great moment of all of our SELECT family.

[Cover photo credit: Olga Gerasimenko]

Have you ever wanted to study in a beautiful place in touch with the environment? Well, I have spent more than 4 years as a bachelor student and 2 years as a temporary base staff member in the University of Peradeniya, which is called “Heaven” by the peoples who are lucky to be at Peradeniya as a student or as a staff member. Peradeniya university is the largest residence Garden university in Sri Lanka which spread over more than 700 hectares in the Mahaweli river flood plain.

The university is bounded by the beautiful mountain region called “Hanthana” and currently more than 11,000 students are pursuing their bachelor studies under nine faculties. Faculty of Engineering located on a one side of the Mahaweli river bank and all other facilities located on the other side of the river. Two sides of a river joined by the bridge called “Akbar” which build the first engineering graduate batch from university.

The university senate house is located in the middle of the university top of the stone towers. Peradeniya is the only one university which perusing Dental Sciences and Veterinary Medicine degrees in the Sri Lanka. The university is fully equipped with gymnasium, playground complex, banks, Open air theater, film, theater, second largest Library of the country and religious places for each of the religions.

Senate House [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7662928]

Students are resident in the more than 15 hostels and they have a beautiful night life in the university premises. Open air theater is contracted without damaging the natural terrain. Actors are acting live in the center of the theater and the audience seated around them. Most of the times drama festival week organized based on some special events such as literature month, graduation and country famous stage dramas are shown in the Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra open air theater the artist who graduate from the Peradeniya and founder of the open air theater.

On the other hand, university of Peradeniya is a mix cultured university of the students who study from all over the Sri Lanka. Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and all other cultural students learn with corporation and they all enrolled with the extra-curricular activities such as New year festivals, Religious festivals and sport activities. Also, students of the University struggled for the students’ rights as well as the public rights of the Sri Lanka against government decisions and university decisions.

Students of the University go beyond their studies and move to the society to accomplish their responsibilities. Each of the faculties organizes their own programs under Main students’ union. As an example program such as “Arunella” organized by Engineering students’ union conducting the more than three-month period of Maths and Science seminar series for G.C.E. Ordinary level examination students in low facilitated schools in the country. University students raised money from the community for the programs and they expend their free time such as weekend to equip those students from rural areas for complete their examinations successfully. And successful students have appreciated with grants for their higher education.

Being with the multicultural environment with closer touch with the nature will make the students' mind in a peaceful place and that will motivate them to success their studies as well as to become lover to the all nationalities and the environment. University of Peradeniya is the greatest place which contributes good artists, beautiful memories and thousand numbers of professionals in the world and that is a place which posed for the most of the love stories and breakups. So most of the people called it “Pera” and we called “Heaven”

University in the flower season

View of the mountain region "Hanthana" from Faculty of Engineering

Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra open air theater

Have you ever thought about the real time applications of the knowledge of engineering? I was first inspired by the famous words of the engineer Theodore von Karman, “Scientist explores the world, it as it is and Engineers create the world that never has been”. Since our High School, Bachelor studies and further graduate studies, we are interacting with a number of projects which have higher deep academic content and most of the time which is not applicable to the real world scenarios. MSc SELECT program has changed its path towards applicability and feasibility of the education to the real world scenarios with consideration of economy, environment and social community. Because without feasibility and applicability of the technology and methodology, students who pass out from the degree programs are not worth in the real world.

A project of the year (POY) was introduced by appointing 2016/2017 SELECT first year students to the real problems with the industries and social communities. The Sri Lankan project was done by the collaboration of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL), University of Polytechnic de Catalonian, Spain (UPC) and Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden (KTH) Project is basically to cover energy 3.8 megawatts annual energy demand of the Wijeya Newspapers company (Pvt) Ltd., future expansion of business with 30%-40%, Furthermore the company wishing to move for the power energy sector to cover their consumption of energy and to sell it to the national grid. Main Idea is to analysis of the feasibility studies of the potential of renewable potential for the requirements. Biomass, Solar Photovoltaics and wind potential in Sri Lanka was a parallel analysis as two groups and finally project supervisors’ assets best idea and come up with the common idea to apply integration solution with of biomass, solar photovoltaics and the improvements of the energy efficiency in the printing factory complex area. In this second phase KTH and UPC students were visits 4th of March 2017 to the Sri Lanka for the further studies about the project and few of study visits to the several power plants and useful authorities.

Considering the offset which has landed with prosperous coconut vegetation in the Bingiriya area and the potential of the renewable wind energy was neglected, due to its low potential of the area and one megawatt gasification biomass plant with one megawatt solar PV was proposed by considering the fuel (Dendro) supply chain, solar availability, community, environment and economy. In order to engage community, they have been taken into the part of the fuel supply chain and that will provide a considerable amount of contribution to the social well been and convey a good idea about the technology of the society. The important factor is to achieve challenges without harming environment balance and generate green energy from the renewable which fit into the society and economy by reducing the carbon footprint of the processes. And from the energy efficiency criteria solar roof top PV, HVAC (Heating, ventilation and air conditioning) optimization with retrofit solutions, compressor piping optimization, compressor load shifting to the off peak time, lighting optimization with considering the natural lighting and printing machineries and printing line optimization was considered. Final analysis of business model will be developed in order to achieve Sri Lanka energy policies and economy towards Sustainable Power Generation and Efficient Process Management for Carbon Neutral Operations of the company.

Designing, Planning, manufacturing and installing are the most dominant words that, can we hear when discussing engineering. Conventional engineering is the way of ease our life, but as we know with these technologies we have already destroyed, waste resources and money over and over without considering the future generations. Deforestation for human needs, global warming due to industrial emission already peaked due to higher growth of the population. This is the new era, people destroy by owner because of technology, when technology develops to ease our life peoples are tending to explore more and more to ease each of every task without thinking and managing about environment and resources.

Are we really success as Engineers? Yes, when considering technical point of view engineers have contributed lots and lots of innovations to the world. But when considering the part of this biosphere humans have done non reversible damage to the environment by destroying and misusing resources and money.

But with all collapse happen with the technology, and due to bad experience that affect to the environment. Engineers are now mostly concern about the environment and as well as the economy. Here now we have things more than engineering, which is considering environment, Society and the economy when applying engineering technology to the real world application. Therefore, as a graduate who are going to contribute to technological world should consider sustainability with environmental systems, society and economic system as same as the technology.

That is the main reason why MSc SELECT is tending to provide all-rounder exposure to the knowledge of Management, Entrepreneurship, Innovations, Economics to the student’s parallel with the technical knowledge. All the SELECT students are participating in the one week crash course in business studies (40-hour crash course) in February in ESADE, Barcelona in Spain. Which is the one of the highest ranked business university in the world. Also ESADE is the one of opportunity for all SELECT students who studies in the KTH, UPC and OUSL with each other. Rather than learning whole sessions are conducted as an interactive session and students have to have a complete project regarding business model development for innovative business.

ESADE crash course 2017

As remote based student, Personally I have gained considerable knowledge that can initiate business studies, management, innovation and marketing further related to my technical background. Each of every first year students of the SELECT annual participating for the crash course and InnoEnergy master school facilitating all the arrangements.

This is highly valuable opportunity for the engineering students in order to think beyond engineering with optimizing not only technology, but also environment, economy and all the factors which is related to our life and future generation to enhance humanity beyond the conventional engineering.