Engineering students start to construct the European Research Area
A European exchange programme for technology students is helping to make the European Research Area a reality by building multinational and public-private sector links in the technology industry. The Unitech International programme, founded in September 2001, involves seven technical universities from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. - the Universities of Technology of Aachen (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Delft (the Netherlands) Milan (Italy) and Zürich (Switzerland), as well as ParisTech in France and the UK's Imperial College, London. It also has 20 leading multinational corporate partners, including Philips Electronics, Siemens, ShellGroup and IBM. The programme gives engineering students the opportunity to combine their degree with management and business studies and improve their language skills. The exchange is unique in combining both internship and study in a foreign country, including at least six months at one of the European partner universities and a management internship of at least three months at one of the partner companies. The remaining three months can be divided between academic work and internship. Some 56 students, put forward by their home institutions and chosen through an intensive selection procedure, are currently participating in the Unitech 2001 programme. Mariëtte Spiekernan, Senior Policy Advisor for Internationalisation at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, helped to develop the original programme. She said that Unitech is an excellent example of the international and cross-sectoral cooperation which will form the basis of Research Commissioner Busquin's proposed European Research Area. 'This is one of the most promising developments we have in which we have really made progress with cooperation between academic and corporate partners and the future leaders in technology,' she said. 'The results so far are very encouraging. We have always discussed how to improve the relationship between academia and industry. Through this programme, we have started to understand each other more.' Nils Rickert, general secretary of the Unitech International programme, said at the Unitech general meeting of 27 September: 'Intensive contact between all parties is exactly what is strived for in the Unitech network.' Ms Spiekernan also said that the students who participated in the course took away with them a greater understanding of the need for co-operation between the public and private sectors. Students are given specific tuition on the managerial aspects of technological development and the impact of research and development (R&D) in high technology industry.