Howdy folks. It’s your community Kansan, and another member of the mechanical contingent here on the trip. As one of the three blog masters of the trip, I am happy to finally, and truly, contribute to this final product.

Today was somewhat slower but absolutely as interesting. We had the privilege of attending a lecture and some tours at Politecnico di Milano, the largest technical institution in Italy, (42,000 students, a mix of Bachelors, Masters, and PhD students) and one of the top universities in the world. Our first presentation was in a beautiful ornate conference room, concerning some basic background information about the university, from a delightful presenter.

From there, we were led on a tour into the I3N laboratories for some information presented Professor Sampietro. Once in the labs, we were met with some faces that were more similar to ours than was anticipated. Some Masters and PhD students were in there, and they were kind enough to sacrifice some of their time to present to us a couple of their research projects. It was super interesting and after their short presentations of some high-level information pertaining to their projects, it devolved into a super informal Q&A where a couple of us American students were able to learn a lot more about the Italian education structure, among other interesting topics (namely the nightlife). Turns out that internships in Italy are largely nonexistent, and when they graduate, they are just kinda thrust into the working world without the experience that American students are able to garner.

From there, Grant, Nate, and I (the Blog Boiz), snuck away from the larger group to grub out on some delicious pizza from a stone pizza oven in a box truck. Sounds confusing but see below photo for an idea. It competes for my favorite food on the trip so far.

After lunch we meandered over to another lab where the robotics department provided a short presentation on their work. Their work was mostly focused on collaborative robotics, basically tasks that require both human and robotic activity. It was a shorter presentation, but super interesting as well.

Following the lab tour, we got on the bus and headed over to Arexpo, an extremely bold project that is taking place in the old location of the 2015 World Fair in Milan. It is a desire of a mostly publicly held company (Arexpo) to repurpose this location to create a space that is a hub for innovation in Milan. The goal is to open a university, hospital, and what is called a “human technopole”, or a point of research for the whole of this hub. The designs presented to our group were extremely forward-looking while being functional, sustainable, and aesthetically pleasing.

Since then, we took the short bus drive back and have been having a quiet night at the hotel. We’re pretty tired but we’re nearing the end and should be able to power through these last two days and reach the end. Looking forward to the last couple days but also our return stateside. Piacere Italy.

Peace out Italy, [Arnie voice] I’ll be back.