the strategic plan of macau university of science and technology (m.u.s.t.) lays out an ambitious blueprint for the university’s development objectives and priorities in the five-year period 2021-2025. it particularly calls for further strengthening of the engineering disciplines and stipulates more coherent academic planning and development of areas of excellence.
we live in a time when innovation and technological development take place at an increasingly fast pace. to prepare and cultivate future engineering talents and leaders who can succeed and thrive in such a challenging time, educators worldwide have come to the consensus that the academic approach to engineering disciplines and interdisciplinary collaborations is in need of a fundamental rethinking and strategizing. this is what inspires the university to undertake the initiative of creating faculty of innovation engineering (fie).
innovation engineering is about creating scientific and technological breakthroughs based on fundamental, applied and multi-disciplinary research. innovation – a key driver of a knowledge economy – is also about an entrepreneurial mindset to explore the unknown, to imagine the unthinkable, to make use of emerging technologies and novel multi-disciplinary approaches and business models to tackle grand challenges, and to create social and economic value.
the decision to establish fie is based on extensive deliberation by the university leadership, substantial consultation with stakeholders, careful examination of similar initiatives from universities and research institutes worldwide, and positive feedbacks from high-tech leaders. the official unveiling will take place on march 27, 2022.
the establishment of fie brings strong but detached research clusters into a single unified structure and organization, integrates and consolidates resources for engineering disciplines, creates fertile grounds and opportunities for inter-disciplinary ideas to flourish and come to fruition, and is conducive to the internationalization effort.
the fie will consist of the following academic units: school of computer science and engineering, department of engineering science, department of materials science and engineering, and department of environmental science and engineering. in addition, fie is academic home to the following research institutes: macao institute of systems engineering; macao environmental research institute; macao institute of materials science and engineering; macao institute of smart city; international institute of next generation internet; open intelligent electric vehicles research center (oiev-rc); joint laboratory on medical robotics innovations; and macao centre for mathematical sciences. the organization structure facilitates cross-disciplinary collaboration with other units including the faculty of medicine, the state key laboratory of quality research in chinese medicine, the dr. neher’s biophysics laboratory for innovative drug discovery, the state key laboratory of lunar and planetary sciences, the national research station of coastal ecological environments in macao and the key laboratory of river basin digital twinning of ministry of water resources.