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.

Can you imagine learning from teachers far away from your country in staying your home country? As we know now in the world most of the potential teachers are from the northern hemisphere and most of the postgraduate students are from the southern hemisphere. So many of the students moves to get an education from foreign countries by leaving their home two years, three years, maybe more than by spending more money on it. Some students are wasting time and waiting for many years to get an opportunity with scholarship due to their low economy.

But can you think about learning for those potential teachers from your home, your home country by hanging with your computer? Answering teacher’s questions as well as asking and clarifying your questions live from them. Connect globally student network, make some friends all over the world from your place, without leaving your country?

Here is that, for now that is not just a concept, KIC InnoEnergy have pitched their first trial on flipped classroom regarding MSc SELECT (Pathways for Sustainable Energy Systems) two-year degree programme. Teachers from Sweden, Spain, Italy and other European countries teaching their lessons through the online portal. Students from Barcelona in Spain and Stockholm in Sweden connecting partly online and Students from Sri Lanka (http://www.innoenergy.com/the-future-of-global-education-the-remote-select-programme-has-launched/) taking all the lessons, Quizzes and submissions through the Internet. While final examinations are getting through local invigilator and send those to the teachers. And the same time, students and teachers are gathering for the few occasions like fall seminar, spring seminar, ESADE business crash course and master school kickoff event to interact remote students each other in their first year.

2016/2017 MSc SELECT remote Sri Lanka Batch with Prof. Torston (Left: Janitha Ekanayake, Lalitha Srilal, Sachintha Rathnayake, Ruchira Abeyweera (Sri Lankan Coordinator, Sachini Wimalasiri, Pfof. Torston, Mihirani Kathumalika, Lathika Attanayake)

As the student of first fully remote student group I have gotten many opportunities from flipped classroom concept. I got an opportunity to stay in my home and attend all the lectures through this and build lots of contacts from various students in various cultures. And the same time with interactive sessions in Stockholm, Germany we may able to strong connection between teachers as well as other students in Sweden, Spain and another country in the consortium. Then we may able to expend more with my family rather than move to another country.

But as well as the remote studies programme is designed to take second year from another Europe university except first year university and move there to complete the degree programme. But we can reduce time period that expends in the abroad and get maximum out from the new concept called flipped class room. Therefore, this is the modern era of the educated and each of the students in all over the world can fulfill their educational requirements easily and this is a good choice for future students who are seeking to spend more in the home country.