On February 25, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering held a kick-off event of International Project-Based Learning (iPBL) program scheduled in summer 2022. A total of 82 students and faculty members from Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology (STUST, Taiwan) and University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJR, Philippines), and OIT participated in this event.

The iPBL, which had been conducted by the three universities every summer vacation, was last held in 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but will be held in an online format for the first time in the summer of 2022. The program theme is "Smart Energy Control Challenge 2022" and the participants will work on the project related to smart grid technology.

At the beginning of the event, Associate Professor Masatoshi Koyama of OIT gave an overview of the history of international exchange in the department and the program that will take place in the summer of 2022. Following that, Assistant Professor Hidehito Matayoshi of OIT explained the technical aspects of the project. He gave a lecture on the fundamentals of smart grid technology, which is the basis of the project, and introduced a prototype of a micro-grid scale circuit system that will be fabricated in the project. He also explained how the students from the three universities will work together in an online format to solve the problem. The event concluded with questions and comments from STUST and USJR participants and an exchange of ideas.

This event was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the Sakura Science Exchange Program.