In April 2008, the University of Edinburgh and Tongji University, China, established a joint research centre in the area of Fire Safety Engineering.

Tongji-Edinburgh Research Centre in Fire Safety Engineering

Mission

"To foster true collaborative international research in Fire Safety Engineering focused on enabling safer and sustainable built environments through improved understanding of the fundamental arts and sciences and the derived engineering systems and through influencing fire safety engineering practice internationally."

The fire safety engineering research groups at both Tongji and Edinburgh have state of the art research laboratories, equipped with a range of facilities which complement each other well. The facilities at Tongji include:

• A furnace for testing restrained or unrestrained structural components
• A three-axis, six-degrees-of-freedom shake table used for testing models of tall buildings
• A unique 4-shake table for testing of very large models
• A multi-storey structural fire testing facility is intended to be built shortly

The facilities at Edinburgh include:

• Fire propagation apparatus
• Cone calorimeter
• Furniture calorimeter
• And many other diagnostic techniques

The initial collaborations will be part of the FireGrid project and it is intended that academics from both universities will travel to the other for short-term teaching and research activites.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR TONGJI UNIVERSITY MASTER’S STUDENTS (ALSO OPEN TO STUDENTS FROM OTHER CHINESE UNIVERSITIES)
The University of Edinburgh will offer two “fee scholarships” every year starting from 2009 (for the next three years) for Chinese students wishing to pursue a PhD program in this area at the University of Edinburgh. The students are expected to apply for a CSC scholarship for support of their living expenses in Edinburgh. Please contact Professor Asif Usmani for more information.

Chinese students from any Chinese University wishing to pursue a PhD degree may also like to note that there are many other such fee scholarships provided by the University of Edinburgh in all areas of study including engineering. As these are very competitive, the best way to apply for them is to identify a supervisor in your subject of interest and communicate with them via email so they can support you in the process. After agreement is reached please begin the process of application using guidance on the Postgraduate Homepage

Currently enrolled students at the Centre:
Yaqiang Jiang
Jian Jiang