TechNOII is a partnership project for research and educational cooperation between the Department of Marine Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China. NTNU and SJTU are the two best universities in the area of marine technology in the world and have a wide range of common research and educational activities in this area, with core disciplines in structural mechanics/dynamics, hydrodynamics and automatic control. This formulates a good basis for further cooperation between the two universities. This project will be the first step to materialize the Joint Research Centre Agreement that was established between the two departments in April 2018, with focus on the technologies for new ocean industries - offshore wind, aquaculture and ocean/coastal infrastructures. Based on the existing research activities and the master and PhD study programs in the two universities, this project will support and develop formal and extensive research exchange of master students, PhD candidates, postdocs and faculty members. It will contribute to increase joint publications of the research results in international journals and conferences and joint scientific seminars that are open to the industry and other universities/research institutes for dissemination of the research results. Development of new courses/course materials and joint project proposals to various national and international calls will also be supported.
This INTPART project aims for enhancing the research and educational cooperation between Department of Marine Technology NTNU in Norway and School of Naval Architecture, Civil and Ocean Engineering SJTU in China in the areas of marine technology, with focus on novel and future marine structures, such as offshore wind turbines, fish farms and floating bridges. It stimulated the knowledge share between the two universities through student exchanges (both MSc and PhD), bilateral academic seminars (both physical and online) and summer schools at SJTU. More specifically, the academic cooperation via PhD exchanges is based on the mutual interests and the complementary competences (with NTNU more on numerical methods and SJTU more on experimental techniques) in the area of offshore floating wind turbines, with focus on design and analysis. The cooperation contributed to the knowledge disseminations in the academia via the co-organized sessions in the international conferences (for example ISOPE2020, hosted by SJTU). It also contributed to the knowledge transfer to the industry via the organized seminars (like NTNU Alumni China – Offshore wind seminar series), especially in the areas of offshore wind for which both countries have made policies for significant development. The continued cooperation on the numerical and experimental study of floating bridges and submerged floating tunnels via PhD joint supervision and joint paper publications also contributed to the broader communications in the bridge technology in the two countries. Thorough discussions and preparations about the double master degree program on marine technology, especially on the different practices of the two universities (courses, thesis, graduation requirements), have been made. However, due to Covid-19, the program has not yet been implemented. This cooperation also helped keep the two universities’ high rankings (No. 1 and No. 2) in the Subject-based Shanghai Ranking in the last years. In general, if there were no Covid-19 and associated restrictions, the cooperation could be more extensive in terms of both cooperating professors and research areas.
Oceans is one of the four strategic areas for 2014-2023 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and China is considered as one of the most important countries for cooperation. Both the Department of Marine Technology (DMT), NTNU and the School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering (NAOCE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) have a wide range of common research and educational activities in the area of marine technology, with disciplines in structural mechanics/dynamics, hydrodynamics and automatic control. This formulates a good basis for further cooperation between the two institutions and therefore, a Joint Research Centre (JRC) on Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture was formally established in April 2018. The INTPART project will be the first step to materialize the JRC agreement with focus on the technologies for new ocean industries - offshore wind, aquaculture and ocean/coastal infrastructures. This project aims to enhance and broaden the long-term research and educational cooperation. Based on the existing research activities and the master and PhD study programs in the two institutions, the project will support and develop research exchange of master students, PhD candidates, postdocs and faculty members, joint publications of the research results in international journals and conferences, joint scientific seminars that are open to the industry and other universities/research institutes for dissemination of the research results, development of new courses and new course materials and development of joint project proposals to various national and international calls. It is expected that by enhancing the cooperation between DMT/NTNU and NAOCE/SJTU, the current world-leading positions of the two institutions in marine technology for the traditional offshore oil & gas industry, can be transferred to the new ocean industries – offshore wind, ocean-based aquaculture and very large ocean/coastal infrastructures.