Lino Costa, Research Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee Space Institute, recently presented eight lectures on Laser Materials Processing at the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), located in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, People’s Republic of China.

Professors Weiping He and Lei Lei, of NPU, invited Costa to give the series of lectures as part of the “Graduate courses in English” program. The lectures covered the following topics: Laser Marking, Laser Induced Surface Improvement (LISI), Laser Additive Manufacturing, Femtosecond Laser Machining, and Modeling of Laser Materials Processing. During the visit to NPU (6-19 January 2015), Costa also toured the labs of Professors He and Lei, where graduate students develop various part marking techniques and investigate multiple aspects of part marking technology. “In addition to laser marking and laser materials processing in general, NPU graduate students were also very interested in talking about all aspects of culture that bond east and west, from sports and music, to cinema and food! This visit to China was a truly wonderful opportunity for me, and I was very touched by the hospitality of NPU”, said Costa.

Established in 1957, NPU is a Public University with two campuses (Youyi and Changan), 16 academic schools, offering 62 undergraduate programs, 122 postgraduate programs, 69 doctoral programs, and 16 postdoctoral programs. At present, NPU has over 26 thousand students in total, of which more than 14 thousand are undergraduates, and more than 3500 faculty. NPU is located in the ancient capital city of Xi’an, known as Chang’an in ancient times. As the starting point of the Silk Road, this city served as capital of China, for the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties, for a thousand years. Present day Xi’an offers visitor many historical sites, such as the Terracotta Warriors, the Huaqing Palace, the Xi’an City Wall, and the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, as well as many contemporary points of interest like the Shaanxi History Museum and the Xi’an musical fountain (the largest in Asia).

Lino Costa (sitting) with several NPU graduate students. Photo and story by Lino Costa.