Educational and Cultural Attaché of the Republic of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. Encourages Human Resource Development in the Field of Engineering to Study in the US
Washington. D.C., (10/14/2021). The Indonesian Embassy in Washington, D.C. through the Educational and Cultural Attaché in collaboration with Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), the Indonesian Higher Education Chancellor’s Council (MRPTNI), and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) held the 14th series of the webinar of Bincang Karya (Bianka) or Creation Talks.
“This webinar series aimed at increasing research and education cooperation between Indonesia and the United States,” said Popy Rufaidah, the Educational and Cultural Attaché (Atdikbud) of the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, D.C. in opening the event on Tuesday (10/14).
On this occasion, Andin Hadiyanto, President Director of the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia, stated that the engineering field played an important role in efforts to handle the Covid-19 pandemic. For this reason, he said, LPDP continued to encourage the improvement of human resources in this field by continuing to provide support through the various scholarships. Andin added that the field of Engineering was one of the national development programs. However, the number of human resources in this field still needed to be increased.
The event was attended by three representatives from Pennsylvania State University, Cornell University, and Cornell Tech, Cornell University. Each of them was Mort Webster, Professor of Energy Engineering; Director of the Graduate Program at Pennsylvania State University; Alexander Deyhim, Professor and Associate Director, Master’s Program in Engineering (M. Eng) Cornell University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering; and Joseph Korevec, Director of Admissions and Admissions, Cornell Tech, Cornell University.
Those three representatives provided a comprehensive explanation of the various programs in the field of engineering offered at the three universities including the requirements, the admission process and various research collaborations that might be carried out.
This activity presented three Master’s students, namely Hanif F. Yoga, Mumtaziah Faaz, and Novan Zakkia. These three Indonesian students are the awardees of the LPDP Master’s Program. Various brilliant ideas were presented in this webinar.
In his research, Hanif, who is a Master’s student at the Pennsylvania State University, presented his ideas on how to manage Carbon dioxide gas. There were at least three points that became the main focus of his exposure, namely how much and how long the carbon dioxide could be stored and whether the carbon dioxide could rise to the surface and more importantly, how to look at this from the economic perspective.
“This research is a collaborative project between Penn State University and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),” Hanif told at the end of his presentation.
Meanwhile, the increasing use of Lithium batteries along with the rapid development of technology, including in the automotive sector in the United States, attracted the attention of Mumtaziah Faaz, a Master of Engineering student from Cornell University.
“Research showed that Cobalt and Lithium are abundant in the oceans. This is certainly an extraordinary potential considering that Indonesia’s territory is mostly made up of oceans. The challenge is, how we can harvest these natural resources without destroying the natural environment,” said Mumtaziah.
In her research, she tried to test two ways to mine Lithium and Cobalt in the ocean, namely by using UVC exposure and modifying surface materials.
Meanwhile, Novan Zakkia, candidate for Master of Engineering (M. Eng) in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell Tech, Cornell University shared his perspective on his experience as an international student at the university and what he was doing currently.
Together with his team, Novan focused on energy efficiency for commercial buildings. In their prototype project, it was found that the building owners did not know anything about how to make energy consumption efficient. The existence of a gap between building owners and experts was the basis for creating a platform that could connect building owners with policy makers or experts to jointly overcome this problem.
“In this case, data science and machine learning will be an important part of this idea. The challenge is that each building has different characteristics, different data on how much energy is consumed and what kind of technology is used in the building,” added Novan.
To close the event, Popy hoped that this webinar could foster the enthusiasm of Indonesian students to compete for continuing their study at various leading universities in the United States.
The recording of the 14th BIANKA live broadcast can be accessed at official Facebook page of Atdikbud USA in the following link https://bit.ly/fb-watch-bianka14