Tokyo, Japan Project Center - MQP | Project Centers | Global Project Program | Project Based Education | Project Based Learning

Tokyo, Japan Project Center - MQP

Current Director(s):

Adam Clayton Powell

Program Term(s):

B-Term during late fall

Project Opportunities:

Major Qualifying Project (MQP)

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This site is centered around Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT), an engineering-focused university with a campus in the heart of downtown Tokyo. SIT is a very urban campus in a single large 14-story building housing teaching and research facilities. The location is beautiful, in an artificial archipelago a short bridge-walk from the heart of downtown Tokyo. It is slightly larger than WPI (~6000 undergrads 2000 grad students), and has ten full-time staff focused on international programs. SIT hosts about 1000 visiting students per year from all over the world. The library is in an expansive space on an upper floor with enormous windows overlooking Tokyo Bay and the other artificial islands. The building is engineered to resist damage during earthquakes: during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, not a single book fell from the library shelves. It also includes a "Tech Plaza" comparable to the open Foisie labs, this one with optical and electron microscopes, X-ray diffraction and tomography, and other equipment, all of which are available for use by appropriately trained students.

The partnership was established in 2019.

Note the 2020 MQP will closely follow the Olympic Games in Tokyo which end August 9, but will overlap with the Paralympic Games which run from August 26 to September 6. SIT is very close to many Olympic venues.

The laboratory of Prof. Naoki Ono works on novel thermo-fluid devices in many areas, from heat pipes to Marangoni devices to capillarity effects. The group has considerable experience at the interface of experimentation and validated mathematical modeling (mainly Finite Element Analysis) in order to understand fundamental behavior and devise novel innovations.

Projects are determined by the host Prof. Naoki Ono at SIT. In 2019, the one MQP project is on characterization of fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of a new class of fibrous porous metal materials, likely to be used for enhanced heat transfer to fluids or boiling or electrochemical reactions.

There may be additional opportunities in the SIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering for interested students.