Summer School ETH Singapore Month - Post-Pandemic Future

Abstract

Students engage with researchers from a range of disciplines as well as with public officials from Singapore agencies on the topic of the post pandemic future. They visit research centres and infrastructure facilities, meet government representatives, social advocates, and fellow students from local and overseas partner universities.

Objective

In the ETH Singapore Month 2021, students will - identify and address complex global societal challenges based on at least one of the seventeen sustainable development goals - justify and situate their project idea within a broader context - engage in interdisciplinary projects by exchanging ideas with peers and apply their specialist knowledge to a complex and new problem - work in an international collaborative and open-minded environment - apply ‘design thinking’ to develop scenarios, alternative solutions, prototypes and visualisations - understand different priorities and approaches in Singapore and in your country of origin - present their project to a broader audience in a convincing manner and also defend it in front of an expert panel •experience the Singapore ETH Centre, CREATE research programmes, Singapore and South East Asia

Content

Students engage with researchers from a range of disciplines as well as with public officials from Singapore agencies on the topic of the post pandemic future. They visit research centres and infrastructure facilities, meet government representatives, social advocates, and fellow students from local and overseas partner universities. This allows them to be exposed to a broad range of issues, ideas, and ideologies that shape the future of global society. Next to a dense and innovative learning format, the ETH Singapore Month is also about experiencing the Singaporean culture and its research environment in Southeast Asia. The ETH Singapore Month – a summer school of almost four weeks – consists of a framework program (exclusively for ETH master students) and a core workshop in the second and third week. This core workshop brings together students and faculty from different disciplines and universities to explore complex challenges of our time, under the heading «Post-Pandemic Future». Relationships among science, technology, and design – whether pertaining to public health, climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, growing waste, widespread poverty, demographic ageing, and/or ethnic and gender inequality are elaborated. Based on input seminars and excursions, participants work in small interdisciplinary groups and critically investigate the potential of design (and of design thinking) as a method for both the production of knowledge and its implementation into practice. In the framework programm, participants from ETH Zurich are offered an intercultural framing week in Singapore, with guided visits, allowing students to understand and immerse themselves into local culture. The ETH month closes with a reflection on the findings, an analysis of the process, and a compilation of a documentation of the work.

Resources