The CDIO Academy is a conference of engineering students brought together from around the world to share their ideas and develop them in an educational and competitive environment. This paper recaps the experiences of two MIT students--Adam Fuhrmann (2011) and Max Brand (2011)--at CDIO Academy 2011.
CDIO was founded in part by Prof. Edward Crawley, one of the co-founders of the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (ELP), and provides an innovative framework for effective engineering education. CDIO Academy 2011 was held at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), near Copenhagen, Denmark. The theme of the conference was “Rethink City”, where the goal was for teams of engineering students to develop innovative solutions to solve a wide array of problems faced by modern cities.
This conference took the majority of the tenets of the ELP curriculum and presented them in a fast-paced and exciting four-day event. It was an outstanding opportunity to solidify all of the lessons we learned in ELP and to network with fellow engineering students and members of industry from around the world.