WPI Tentacles Spread Technology Across the Globe

WORCESTER Polytechnic Institute students have pursued projects at 18 sites around the world. Some of the sites are ``projects centers'' where WPI has an ongoing operation and rotates faculty members in and out as on-site advisers. ``Project program sites'' are a little less formally organized and the WPI adviser will not be there for the extent of the project. Still other students participate in exchange programs with universities and colleges abroad. At those sites, the project adviser is likely to be a professor at the local institution.

Most of the projects completed overseas are what WPI calls its Interactive Qualifying Project, a seven-week task that requires students to examine the mixing of science, technology, and society. All students also have to complete an extensive project in the humanities and a major qualifying project, which concentrates on their major field of interest. All the projects done overseas are carried out by small teams of students.

Current project sites are listed below. As project ideas are developed in other locations, often through the collaboration of far-flung WPI alumni, students may end up in locations not on this list. One team did its work in New Zealand, for example. Projects are under way in Vietnam and Costa Rica, and a team of WPI students may go to Kenya or Botswana this summer.

WPI project centers or programs:

London

Venice

Bangkok

Guayaquil, Equador

San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Francisco

Washington

Hong Kong

Taipei

Exchange programs:

Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal

University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Ecole des Mines and University Marne-La-Vallee, Paris

Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium

Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Technical College of Munich, Munich, Germany

Federal Technical University, Zurich, Switzerland

Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics, Moscow

Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm