Global Initiatives

By Daniel P. Smith, McCormick Engineering News 8/8/24

Shuyue Qu can always say she was the first.

A master’s degree student from the University of Hamburg’s Integrated Climate Systems Science (ICSS) program, Qu recently completed a three-month research stay at Northwestern University, becoming the inaugural visiting student researcher in what faculty at both institutions hope evolves into a routine practice propelling science exchange.

“I was happy to be the first participant and grateful I had the opportunity to come to Northwestern and develop my research skills,” said Qu, a native of China.

Empowered by Northwestern Engineering Global Initiatives director Matthew Grayson’s Four Corners program, an ambitious effort to spur collaborative research on sustainability among four leading global universities, as well as support from the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern, Qu lived in Evanston and worked alongside Professor Daniel Horton’s Climate Change Research Group.

Via Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Horton leads a team of area researchers representing academia, public health, municipalities, and community partners developing a heat vulnerability index for Chicago. As part of that process, Horton has access to various public health data, including death certificate data.

Qu leveraged Horton’s position to secure death records in Chicago from 1993-2022. She then analyzed mortality data and investigated the profound health impacts of heat waves in Chicago over that 30-year period. Her in-progress master’s thesis consists of a comparative analysis of heat vulnerability in Chicago to heat vulnerability in Hamburg, a German city of about 1.8 million residents.

Read the complete article here.

McCormick Global Initiatives is proud to have provided travel support for a team of five McCormick faculty and students participating in the 2023 Joint Undertaking for an African Materials Institute (JUAMI) School, held in Nairobi, Kenya in June.  JUAMI brings together materials researchers from Africa, Europe, Israel, and the United States for two-week immersive classroom, research, and collaboration-building opportunities designed to provide ongoing resources, connections, and research partnerships for participants. 

This year's McCormick delegation continues a strong Northwestern presence at JUAMI events, led by Professor Sossina Haile, a primary event organizer.  The MGI Faculty Global Networking Initiative provided Haile and Professors Jennifer Dunn (Chemical and Biological Engineering) and G. Jeffrey Snyder (Materials Science and Engineering) with funding for travel expenses, facilitating an ongoing, multi-disciplinary engagement with the JUAMI community.  The Faculty Global Networking Initiative is designed to support similar initiatives expanding McCormick's international connections, providing mobility and subsistence support for workshops and initiatives at Northwestern and abroad.  More information on the program can be found on our Faculty Opportunities page.

Alongside the faculty participants, MGI Student Ambassador funding also enabled PhD students Jenna Trost (Chemical and Biological Engineering) and Matthew Sweers (Materials Science and Engineering) to take part in the event.  Information on their teaching and collaboration experiences at JUAMI, each culminating in a project proposal, can be found on our Student Ambassador page.  

A full account of the group's experiences at JUAMI 2023 also appears in McCormick Engineering News, and can be accessed here.