The first generation of students participating in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters programme “Sustainable Ship and Shipping 4.0 (SEAS 4.0)” graduated at the beginning of March 2023 in Naples. The said study course is designed as a joint masters programme lasting three semesters, and is primarily intended for students from all over the world who hold technical degrees (naval architecture, mechanical engineering, aerospace, electrical engineering, civil engineering, applied mathematics, physics, etc.) and want to acquire additional skills and competences in the field of naval architecture, updated with new concepts associated with Industry 4.0.
The project is coordinated by the University of Naples Federico II (Italy), with full partners being the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (Zagreb, Croatia), University of A Coruña (Spain), and Technical University Hamburg (Germany). This involvement represents a great achievement for Croatian higher education, since in 2020 the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture became the first Croatian higher education institution to successfully join the Erasmus Mundus programme consortium as a full partner. The success is all the more significant taking into account the strong competition for establishing partnership in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters (EMJM) programmes, with the average annual percentage of green-lit projects being below 10 percent.
One of the important incentives for offering the SEAS 4.0 study course was to encourage the students to develop new academic competences by introducing them to classes that connect naval architecture as a traditional field with new digital technologies. Furthermore, the project helped to increase the international visibility of both the Faculty’s Department of Naval Architecture and Offshore Engineering, and the University of Zagreb. The Department has strong expertise and maintains a hundred year long tradition in producing naval architecture graduates. Its wish is to further develop its programme and offer it to foreign students through a modern and engaging course, making the involvement in this project just one step forward in the internationalization and future development of naval architecture studies at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb.
