On Sunday December 12th, our Engineering and Computer Science students paid a visit to the Egyptian Space Agency, commonly known as EGSA. The students were accompanied by Engineering Science Module Leader Dr. Mohamed Ismail (who also happened to arrange and supervise the trip), in addition to Engineering Science instructor Dr. Amr Elnashar and Physics Lab Engineer Nourhan Mahmoud. In the space agency, the students had the opportunity to watch and examine how exceptionally advanced machinery, technologies, laboratories and systems operate. According to Youssef Sayed, an IFP (international foundation programme) student, who is particularly interested in Mechatronics, the practical correlation between his studies and a real-life application was extremely thrilling to witness. He mentioned, “We saw an implementation of concepts we learned in class such as rotation of satellites and measuring moment of inertia”. Throughout the day, many presentations were given by professional engineers working in EGSA. In the final presentation, our students learned that EGSA provides free online courses and workshops to UH-GAF students. “They also mentioned that if a student achieves high results in the courses and depicts a consistent interest, EGSA can choose to contact our university and let them know that they will fund the student’s final project. I’m personally considering taking my first course with them in the summer!”, Youssef ElSayed enthusiastically said. Evidently, the students began to realize how everything they learn within the walls of the classroom can help them solve the problems they see in the world around them and can have a direct impact on who they become as people.
