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perspectives
The Academic
Professor Meyer Nahon, Department of Mechanical Engineering
McGill University, Canada
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My first exposure to IAESTE came in 1978, in my last year of
Undergraduate studies at Queen's University, when I went
on a work term at Tel Aviv University. Professor Norman Kerr,
then Chairman of IAESTE Canada, was one of my Professors
at Queen’s and was instrumental in finding this placement. It
was my first big trip on my own outside Canada. I worked on
solar ponds---a method then proposed to collect solar energy in
large ponds with stratified saline concentrations. The work was
interesting, but the time in a foreign country even more so. I still
remember fondly the trip around Northern Israel, organized by
IAESTE Israel based at the Technion, with all the other IAESTE
students in Israel that summer.
interactions grew, they needed summer students to work on our
project. So between 2003 and 2005, I accepted students to work
there. Those students were Pascal Maglie from Switzerland,
Koen Jansen from The Netherlands and Samuel Kummrow from
Switzerland. Samuel later returned to Canada to travel and to do
a placement with Professor Clement Gosselin at Laval University,
who was another collaborator on this project.
In 2001, I moved to McGill University in Montreal and built up
a lab there called the Aerospace Mechatronics Lab. IAESTE
students continued to be an integral part of our summers. We
needed help in flying some of our aerial vehicles. Over the period
2005-2008, we had invaluable help from Magnus Nordenborg
from Sweden, Karel Steurs from Belgium and Daniel Peon and
Gabriela Waldhart from Austria. Gabriela tells me she still keeps
in touch with the other IAESTE students from Europe that she
met in Montreal.
Gabriela (on the right) in Field Tests
When I became a Professor in 1991 at the University of Victoria
in British Columbia, I wanted to give students the opportunity
for similar experiences by facilitating foreign students working
in Canada and Canadian students working abroad. I've long felt
that living in a foreign place for months at a time is the best way
to travel. What better way to do this than to take IAESTE students
as summer interns in the lab I was setting up, called the Space
and Subsea Robotics Lab.
Jan Akerlund from Finland was the first IAESTE student in my
lab in Victoria. In 1992, he helped lay the foundation for our lab's
early research in underwater vehicle simulation. When I look
back at some of the work he did, I'm really impressed at what
I asked him to do and what he managed to get done. In the
years that followed, I hosted another two other students in my
lab: Ole Gabrielsen from Norway and Marco Schuepfer from
Switzerland. They each contributed to my lab's activities in their
own way. Marco’s great imagination and design skills were a
challenge to keep up with. He greatly appreciated the time in the
lab because, as he said, it allowed him to see what all that stuff
he was learning in school was good for. He went back to finish
his studies at ETH and drops me a line every year or so.
In 1999, I became involved with a group at the National Research
Council in Penticton, British Columbia that was working on a
very unusual design for a large radio telescope antenna. As our
In most cases, the IAESTE students work together with my
Graduate students helping in their research. This gives an added
benefit of exposing my grad students, usually Canadians, to
students from around the world.
Invariably, the IAESTE students have been excellent. They are
mature, responsible and eager to learn and help in our work. For
many, it's their first exposure to North America.
In 2003, Ginny Arnold, IAESTE Canada’s National Secretary,
asked me to be on the IAESTE Canada Committee. This seemed
a nice opportunity to help IAESTE in its mission. I've tried to
find additional work terms for foreign students at McGill and
give counsel to McGill students who are thinking of applying
to IAESTE. I've talked to many of them over the years and they
always come back feeling that the experience was tremendous.
In closing, just to show what a small world it is, this year I am on
sabbatical at the Technion, in Israel. Each day, coming in to work,
I drive by the Residence where I slept on the first night of that trip
around Northern Israel as an IAESTE trainee, 30 years ago.
Samuel Kummrow in Penticton