Newgiza Univ., UCL Collaborate to Train Future Engineers

One of the Middle East and North Africa’s most innovative new universities is to launch a School of Engineering, developed in collaboration with UCL.

Newgiza University (NGU) is a multidisciplinary private university based at New Giza, Egypt and has quickly become a beacon of innovative education across the Middle East and North Africa. UCL has existing established links with NGU, through the ongoing collaboration on the development of undergraduate medicine, dentistry and pharmacy programmes – facilitated by UCL Consultants, part of UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

 

New chapter for NGU

Now, NGU is to launch two new engineering programmes in ‘Architectural Engineering’; and ‘Computers, Communications and Autonomous Systems’. The courses will form the foundation of a new School of Engineering at NGU.

“This is an exciting and historic new chapter in the journey of Newgiza University,” said Prof Sameh Farid, President of NGU.

“Our new School of Engineering will help to train the next generation of engineers, who are fully equipped to work in, and lead, multi-disciplinary teams to tackle future challenges and opportunities that will arise through the next industrial revolution. This also represents an important new phase in our relationship with one of the world’s leading universities in UCL.”

UCL’s Vice-Provost (Enterprise), Dr Celia Caulcott, added: “At UCL, we believe that collaboration is key to addressing global social, economic, technological and infrastructure challenges of the future. This education project with NGU exemplifies our approach, and crucially will have long term impact, both in the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as further afield.”

At the official signing ceremony to mark the project collaboration, delegations from NGU and UCL were joined by His Excellency Tarek Adel, Egyptian Ambassador to the UK.

Genesis of a collaboration

In 2014, UCL Engineering pioneered a radical new approach to education in the faculty. The Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) combines strong foundations in core engineering knowledge with an innovative educational approach to support students in connecting theoretical learning to the practice and skills required of engineers in the 21st Century. The programme has received national and international recognition.

Building on its existing relationship with UCL, NGU sought to draw on the key content and philosophies of the UCL IEP to create a distinctive programme for its School of Engineering.

Professor John Mitchell, Vice Dean (Education) at UCL Engineering, said:  “The way in which we train engineers today is evolving in response to a rapidly changing world and work environment – which will be marked by themes such as collaboration, multidisciplinarity, automation and sustainability.

"That is why we developed the industry-oriented Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) and we’re delighted to be working with NGU to adopt some of these principles for its School of Engineering. I’ve no doubt that together we will learn more lessons through this experience and continue to evolve our philosophy and approach to engineering education.”

Innovative course content

NGU will launch two new courses in autumn 2020: Architectural Engineering (AE) and Computers, Communications and Autonomous Systems (CCAS).

The AE degree will equip students with the ability to develop a creative, critical, experimental and technically rigorous approach to architectural, environmental and structural design and engineering in buildings.

The CCAS degree will provide NGU graduates with expertise in the design of both the software and hardware required to build the computer systems of the future. The programme will focus on the electronics, computer networking, artificial intelligence and control systems that will drive the next generation of cloud computing, internet of things, communications systems and autonomous machines.

Both degrees will be awarded by NGU but will be supported by curricula content and expertise from UCL.

Excellence in consultancy

UCL Consultants Ltd (UCLC) is wholly owned by UCL and is a leading provider of academic consultancy services. UCLC draws on world-class expertise from over 6,500 academic and research staff at UCL to help solve the many challenges faced by society and business today.

UCLC has particular strengths in helping to develop educational capacity development programmes for business, government, public sector and higher education clients in the UK and around the world.

Roger de Montfort, Managing Director of UCLC, said: “We are delighted to support this next phase of successful collaboration between UCL and NGU.  We have a valued and longstanding relationship with NGU and we look forward to helping them deliver a truly distinctive and innovative engineering education to their students.”