On January 21, 2025, the “Little Engineers” public science and education event, academic guided by the UNESCO International Centre for Engineering Education (ICEE) and hosted by the ICEE Future Science and Technology Education Base (the Base), was successfully held at Tsinghua University. The “Little Engineers” public science and education event aims to stimulate young people's interest in engineering through a combination of various teaching methods, such as campus laboratory visits, scientific practices, and project exploration. The event is designed to inspire technological thinking, promote the development of scientific literacy, and lay a foundation for nurturing "future engineers."
At the beginning of the event, LIU Binli, Director of the ICEE Future Science and Technology Education Base, introduced the ICEE and the Base, and led the teachers and students on a campus tour. Later, the teachers and students visited various practical training rooms, including CNC lathes, casting and forging, flexible manufacturing systems, intelligent transportation, 3D printing, and welding robots, under the guidance of ZHAO Xiaomei, teacher at the Fundamental Industry Training Center (iCenter) at Tsinghua University. Through the laboratory visit, students gained a better understanding of knowledge in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, laying the foundation for hands-on project practice and interdisciplinary knowledge integration.

Visit to the iCenter’s Practical Training Room

In the Basic Artificial Intelligence (AI) class (using target detection as an example), QIAO Kangqi, teacher from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, led the teachers and students on an exciting journey into AI by starting with the interesting and practical technology of target detection. After understanding the principles of target detection, the students gained a deep understanding of how computers use complex algorithms to achieve rapid recognition through hands-on operations. This sparked strong interest in engineering learning.

Basic AI Practice Class

The event was attended by LI Chao from ICEE, CUI Chunhua, AI Xin, and ZHANG Lei from Smart Cloud School Institute of Education Science, as well as nearly 20 excellent teachers and students from 9 schools across the country.