4/6/2013
The University of Illinois and three universities in Sweden continue to evolve their partnership through the INSPIRE program. INSPIRE, now in its third year, was established to form a transnational partnership between the University of Illinois and three leading research universities in Stockholm, Sweden – KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet.
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The University of Illinois and three universities in Sweden continue to evolve their partnership through the INSPIRE program. INSPIRE, now in its third year, was established to form a transnational partnership between the University of Illinois and three leading research universities in Stockholm, Sweden – KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet.
“The goal for this initiative was to engage with an international partner in a strategic undertaking,” said Harry Dankowicz, professor of mechanical science and engineering and faculty liaison for INSPIRE at Illinois. “By having the INSPIRE partnership permeate through the institution, across disciplinary and administrative boundaries, investments of time and resources by a few may be leveraged by many, ensuring a reciprocal relationship with broad, as well as deep, impact.”
Through two research symposia, one at Illinois in the fall of 2010 and another at KTH in the spring of 2011, much of the groundwork was laid for the development of undergraduate and graduate student exchange, possible joint graduate degrees, internships, and engagement with the corporate and public sectors. The INSPIRE Alliance Summit, hosted by Chancellor Phyllis Wise, brought together many of the top-level administrators from the institutions in late April 2012 and resulted in the signing of a letter of intent between all the parties.
“From the very beginning, this was a comprehensive partnership between peers across all the missions of the University,” said Dankowicz, a KTH graduate. “The institutions are premier research universities, so that is obviously a major component.”
All three universities bring similar values and programs. KTH is a technical university with programs spanning from the natural sciences to all branches of engineering, including architecture, industrial management and urban planning.. The faculties at Stockholm include the natural sciences, social sciences, law, and humanities. Karolinska Institutet, meanwhile, is a medical university.
The partnership is already having an impact. Last summer, faculty from KTH and Illinois brought students from both institutions some 12 degrees south of the North Pole to a field component of a five-week course on “Environment and Society in the Changing Arctic.” A similar course is scheduled for this summer.
INSPIRE has sought to contribute to the universities’ efforts in public engagement as well. In November, a faculty-led delegation that included the Executive Directors of the Rockford Housing Authority and the Illinois Housing Development Authority traveled to Stockholm and the Malmo region in the south of Sweden to evaluate innovative examples of sustainable multifamily communities and renovation of social housing. In August 2012, a workshop on new perspectives on transportation infrastructure pricing organized by KTH and Illinois faculty at Illinois Center in Chicago brought together representatives from industry and city planning offices in Stockholm and Chicago.
The influence is not by accident. Ongoing and future outreach activites will likely emphasize railway systems, architecture, sustainable housing, urban planning and land use, and nuclear waste management.
“Sweden is quite a progressive country, being one of the two nations in the world that have established a mechanism for long-term storage of nuclear waste,” said Stefan Ostlund, professor and dean of the School Electrical Engineering at KTH, who, in his capacity as director for the KTH-Illinois Strategic Alliance, was among the contingent in Urbana-Champaign for the universities’ most recent visit. “We have been able to raise funding from the communities in Sweden that house a nuclear waste storage facility in support of an on-site component of a summer course on nuclear waste management that will include Illinois students.”
The February meetings also included discussions of a potential collaborative effort in the developing world, such as a service research site, and the feasibility of establishing a transinstitutional center.
“We’re looking for opportunities to provide public service,” Dankowicz said of the feasibility of expanding INSPIRE to the developing world. “Our goal is to take advantage of knowledge and resources at the individual institutions in order to enhance our possible impact.”
“There is a common denominator in that many of the research projects deal with transportation, infrastructure, energy urbanization, and sustainability,” Ostlund said in addressing the transinstitutional center. “These could be common themes for such a center. Sometimes it may lead to starting new programs, while in other cases it might suffice to work with some already established programs.”
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CONTACT: Harry Dankowicz, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, 217/244-1231
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Mike Koon, writer/editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-1256.