At 9:00 AM of December 4th, 2018, ICARE winter camp team went to National Technical University of Athens (NUTA) for investigation. ICARE European professors Vasilis Riziotis, Dimitris Bouris and George Caralis gave the team a warm welcome.
Professor Vasilis Riziotis gave a welcoming speech for the delegation in the conference room of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and introduced the basic information of NUTA. professors Vasilis Riziotis, Dimitris Bouris and George Caralis showed them around aerodynamics laboratory, the applied thermodynamics laboratory, thermal turbine laboratory and steam boiler and thermal power plant laboratory. The heads of each laboratory also briefly introduced the main research concentration and contents of their respective laboratories and briefly explained the principles and application of various kinds of experimental equipment.
At 2:00 PM, ICARE team exchanged with the European Association of Aerospace Students of National Technical University of Athens. First, three leaders of the Association briefed about the European Association of Aerospace Students (EUROAVIA). EUROAVIA is an international student association and official organizer of the air cargo challenge which is an inter-university competition in Europe and is designed to motivate students to connect with each other and recall their theoretical knowledge and practical skills by building aerial vehicles. In Athens, the Association is mainly divided into local board of directors and EUROAVIAns. The local board of directors consists of the chairman, secretary, finance supervisor, marketing director and technical director. EUROAVIAns consist of 50 students of NUTA and 60 alumni. EUROAVIA organizes the students to visit the airport every year and train students in team cooperation and practical skills. It also sends teams to compete in the Athens Science Festival. At last, the students of both sides discussed the work of Chinese and European student societies, exchange and visits and Chinese and European cultures. They also discussed the feasibility for students of NUTA to attend the winter camps and summer camps of ICARE and reached a preliminary agreement.
National Technical University of Athens is the most important science and engineering university in Greece with long history. It was founded in 1836, located in the center of Athens, and formerly known as the Royal Academy of Arts. It has 33 departments under 9 schools, including School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, School of Architecture, School of Chemical Engineering, School of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering and School of Applied Mathematical & Physical Sciences. It current has 8,500 undergraduates, 1,500 graduate students and 1,100 teaching staff.
Reviews:
Huang Tianyue: the scale of instruments of the four laboratories of School of Mechanical Engineering of National Technical University of Athens is amazing. Such laboratory conditions have laid a solid foundation for the development of higher-level scientific research.
Liu Yiru: we deeply fee the difference of the education system between Europe and China through the communication and exchange with MINES Paristech and National Technical University of Athens. The postgraduate education in Europe pays more attention to the practical application and internship of postgraduates and the associations prefer to cooperate and exchange with major companies. And the postgraduate education in China is more biased towards theoretical research and learning and the development of associations relies more on the support of schools and colleges. But either way, it provides a lot of excellent talents for the society.
Zhang Yuan: I found that the common ground of the universities we visited was that all the offices with experimental needs were equipped with enough space and technical support in an orderly manner. I think this is the attitude towards research and science that we should have and worth learning by each of us! At last, if there is any internship related to wind energy in Greek, I hope that I can seize the opportunity. For I deeply fee that the experimental conditions and methods of NUTA are greatly different from those in China after I visited the wind tunnel laboratory of NUTA. The wind tunnel laboratory of NUTA does not only have huge closed wind tunnel but its blade modeling and pressure measurements are also more rigorous and accurate. I hope to have a chance to practice in that environment and improve myself!
