Over the summer, Engineering World Health offered a free virtual design program bringing together students from the United States, Lebanon, and Jordan. This year’s Virtual Engineering Innovation and Cultural Exchange program, which is supported by the Stevens Initiative, focused on low-resource design and engineering for healthcare in an international setting. 

Over the course of four to six weeks, 193 high school and university students across three different cohorts worked together remotely on international teams, learning about concepts for biomedical design, collaboration, ethics, and entrepreneurship as these topics relate to engineering for low-resource environments.

Students worked independently through self-directed learning modules and collaborated virtually to further develop design ideas and exchange knowledge with help from program mentors with significant engineering background and experience in low-resource hospitals. At the culmination of each program, teams presented their design projects, which ranged from renewable energy sources to provide electricity for medical equipment in remote settings to oxygen leak monitoring systems and low-cost sanitation methods for surgical tools. 

In addition to learning new engineering concepts, this virtual exchange experience used technology to connect young people across continents and cultures, enabling hundreds of students to collaborate and learn with their peers abroad without having to leave their communities. 

To learn more about the VEIC Exchange program, click here. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on virtual exchange opportunities, including the next VEIC Exchange for students in the U.S., Lebanon, and Jordan, in 2022. 

“Thank you sincerely for the experience! A very informative program and I gained friends along the way … It was really interesting learning about engineering in a way that I haven't really done in school yet, such as low-resource settings and the cultural influences in engineering design” 

“You have the chance to meet different people and know more about their cultures, while also working on something that is important: innovating for healthcare in low-resource settings.” 

This program is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government, and is administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.