Foreign exchange

 On Jan. 22nd, 2013, Prof. Yu Huang, Deputy Head of Department of Geotechnical Engineering, CCE, Tongji University, visited the Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering and Mathematics Sciences, City University London. All civil staff from City University were invited and most of them attended the meeting, including Prof. Stallebrass, Prof. Neil Taylor, Prof. Ashraf Ayoub, Dr Andrew McNamara, Dr. Brett Mckinley, Dr. Tatyana Micic, Dr. Agathoklis Giaralis, Dr. Shiqiang Yan and Prof. Qingwei Ma.

 Prof. Huang was shown around the lab facilities for research and education, and given brief information about the university, the school and the department by Prof. Stallebrass, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering. They also had discussion about research in geotechnical engineering with Prof. Neil Taylor, Dr Andrew McNamara and Prof. Stallebrass.

 During the meeting, Prof. Huang made a presentation about Tongji, College of Civil Engineering of Tongji and Department of Geotechnical Engineering. In his presentation, he also made some suggestions on how the civil engineering departments of the two universities could collaborate, which included 1) short–mid-long term exchange of research students and staff; 2) Exchange of undergraduates and MSc students; 3) double degrees.

 There were also some discussions about funding and the fit between each other’s programs for exchange of students and recognition of credits. Both sides found common interests in collaboration. It was thought that a short term exchange of staff and research students would be a sensible start of the collaboration, though more discussion is required about this in the future.

 Later, Prof. Huang had more discussions with Prof. Ma and found more common interests in mesh free methods and wave effects on towers of long suspension bridges.