WSU Joins SIREUS after Outreach to Sweden

Announcement

February 7, 2023 – WSU has been named a founding Affiliated American University in SIREUS, as announced today in Washington, DC. In this connection, on February 21st, a delegation of 5 WSU representaives will participate in the SIREUS Chancellors forum, also in Washington, DC.

Standing for Students – Innovators – Researchers – Entrepreneurs – United States – Sweden, SIREUS is a structured platform for knowledge exchange and increased talent mobility of students and researchers between Sweden and the U.S. in the areas of innovation, research, and entrepreneurship.

The new SIREUS Affiliation of American Universities Program will further strengthen this bilateral academic network.  Each Affiliated American University will be able to:

  • join in strategic academic initiatives with Swedish universities and companies
  • gain first-hand information about programs, events, and initiatives taking place in Swedish academia and
  • participate in workshops, academic delegations, and collaboration projects in the U.S. and in Sweden, including joint participation in EU projects.

In these activities, the Affiliated American Universities will engage the current 13 leading Swedish Universities, such as Linköping University, which have already joined the SIREUS consortium. SIREUS was launched in Feburary 2022 by the Swedish American Chambers of Commerce of the USA (SACC-USA) and is supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC, and the Swedish Institute.

Context

SIREUS invited WSU as a founding Affiliated American University owing to a strategic outreach to Sweden that began in 2017, when Joseph Iannelli, a professor of mechanical engineering in WSU’s Voiland College’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences travelled to Sweden, in his capacity at the time of Associate Dean for Engineering International Programs, and visited with internationalization officers at Linköping University (LiU). Since then, WSU and LiU have signed a transatlantic-collaboration MoU and a reciprocal student exchange agreement. The Sweden – WSU collaboration was augmented by last year’s WA’s Nordic Mission. Subsequent to a grant proposal developed by Iannelli, this expanding collaboration resulted in domestic funding from the National Science Foundation, totalling ~$300,000; LiU colleagues contributed to this proposal and they and Iannelli together then developed additional grant proposals that resulted in international funding from the European Erasmus+ program and the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, totalling over $100,000.

The combined funding will finance a transformative exchange program that will support WSU students in Sweden, at LiU, and LiU students at WSU, who together will complete scientific and engineering computing research projects.  The program is also supported by Boeing and Saab and will not charge any LiU tuition to the WSU students.

This fall, a cohort of 7 diverse WSU students will travel to Sweden, studying and conducting research for the entire fall semester at LiU; each WSU student will receive a $12,000 fellowship.  Significantly, the students hail from 3 WSU campuses: Everett, Pullman, and Tri-Cities and represent two colleges: Arts & Sciences and Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture.

SIREUS Press Release