Morning Lectures at the (new) IES Centre

Profs. Berry and Dickerson present their morning lectures and afternoon laboratory sessions for ECE 301 and ME 331, respectively, at the new IES Centre in the Atkins Building that is adjacent to Gray's Inn in Holborn.

City Tour and the London Eye

On Saturday, June 10, the EIL students were joined by Profs. Berry and Dickerson on a 3-hour walking tour of the City of  London.  Under the direction of our tour guide, students were given a good orientation of the City with chances to take photos near Borough Market, Westminster Abbey, Household Calvary Museum, The Mall, St. Paul's Cathedral, The Globe Theatre, and the Millennium Bridge over the Thames River.  The tour ended at Parliament Square giving the students the opportunity to have lunch before the group's scheduled entry to the London Eye, on the south bank of the Thames River.  The London Eye is Europe's tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and is the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom with over 3 million visitors annually.

Orientation for EIL 2023

Orientation at the new IES Centre at Gray's Inn in Holborn.  Most of the students have arrived and are settling in to their rooms at the Wilde Apartihotel in Whitechapel.

Banquet at Brown's in Covent Garden

Congratulations to our 2022 class of the Engineering in London (EIL) study abroad program! Photos from the banquet dinner at Brown's of Covent Garden on Friday, July 8 are provided below. Click here for the final slideshow of the program edited by Mara Schutt.

Special thanks to our corporate and alumni sponsors of the EIL 2022 program: Tickle College of Engineering, Cisco, International Paper, Jewelry Television,  MilleniTek, Rebecca Collins, and the Larry and Yosiko Shell Global Initiative.

 

Royal Institution (Faraday Laboratory)

On Tuesday evening, July 5, the EIL Students along with Profs. Berry and Aaron visited the Royal Institution (Michael Faraday Museum) near Green Park. In addition to visiting Faraday's Laboratory, the students attended a (Friday) Discourse lecture entitled "Einstein's revolution: Technology for the 21st Century quantum computer" by Professor David Jamieson (University of Melbourne, Australia). His lecture was given in the Royal institution's lecture hall, where Michael Faraday started the Christmas lectures in 1825. The RI today is known for its science education programs, a continuation of the tradition of scientific lectures as enlightened entertainment. The Friday Night Discourses were formal affairs with the audience in evening dress and the speaker by tradition had to start and stop his address as the auditorium clock struck consecutive hours. J. J. Thomson announced the discovery of the electron in his 1897 lecture in this room. The Christmas Lecture program, begun by Michael Faraday and continuing through today, is the oldest continuous science education program for young people.

Brunel Museum

On Monday afternoon  (July 4), the EIL students joined Profs. Berry and Aaron for a visit to the Brunel Museum at Rotherhithe on the bank of the Thames River.  In the original shaft of the tunnel (under the Thames River) that Marc and Isambard (Kingdom) Brunel designed and built, our guide (Khalil Mohammed) gave an excellent historical timeline for this great nineteenth century engineering achievement.  Completed in 1834, this was the world's first underwater tunnel.  Isambard Brunel was considered by many to be the greatest engineer of Victorian England.

Bletchley Park

On a somewhat chilly Friday, July 1, the EIL students along with Profs. Berry and Aaron and Rohima Ahmed  from IES visited Bletchley Park (north of London). Bletchley Park is where Alan Turing and his colleagues in Hut 8 broke the (naval) Enigma code during World War II. The students witnessed demonstrations of working Enigma, Bombe, Tunny, Harwell Dekatron, and Colossus machines. The Colossus was the world's first electric digital computer that was programmable. The Colossus computers were developed to help in the cryptanalysis of the Hitler's Lorenz cipher.  Nicknamed WITCH for Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, the Harwell Dekatron at the National Museum of Computing (NMC) is considered the oldest electronic computer that is still operational. Our NMC guide for the morning, Robert Dowell, did a fantastic job explaining both the history and design of all the early cypher and computing machines.  The students utilized part of their lunch break to burn off some energy on the jungle gym equipment and with a game of ultimate frisbee near the Bletchley Park Mansion.