MAE Professor Establishes a Communication Pipeline During Sabbatical at Ethiopian Technical University
Onur Bilgen, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, elected to spend his 2025 spring semester sabbatical at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology's (AAiT) School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (SECE), the leading technical institute in the German-built Ethiopian university system. His decision was prompted by a desire to immerse himself in a unique cultural and academic locale where he didn't speak the language — although AAiT instruction is in English.
As a member of SECE's faculty, Bilgen worked with and co-advised undergraduate students, participated in collaborative research, helped with laboratory and facility development, and more.
"The electrical engineering students I worked with were quite well-prepared, although they had lower resources in older facilities than we do at Rutgers," he says. Bilgen is gratified to have established an ongoing "pipeline of communication" with a number of the students he worked with at AAiT.
An Ethiopian Co-Advisee Pursues Her SoE PhD
One such undergraduate AAiT student, Bezawit Gebre, arrived on Busch campus on January 16, where she will pursue her doctoral degree under Bilgen's direction.
"Working with Professor Bilgen in Ethiopia encouraged me to continue towards a PhD," she says. "I gained hands-on research experience, especially related to UAVs or drones, and learned how research is carried out and documented. That experience made Rutgers feel like the right place for me to continue growing as a researcher, with a focus on dynamics and control."
Gebre, like Bilgen, notes the difference in the scale of the two universities' research environments — including resources and facilities, as well as Rutgers Engineering's more structured collaboration across areas of the university.
She's excited to be here, eager to "gain experience that will prepare me for future work and help me gain expertise in the field," she says.
An Immersive Cultural Experience
"I came to Ethiopia on a voluntary basis, without any expectations, really," Bilgen says, adding that he had previously visited the country in 2024 as part of a Rutgers-hosted international wind energy conference attended by two Ethiopian students.
Throughout his sabbatical, he notes, "the students and faculty treated me very kindly." A particular pleasure was his introduction to Ethiopian cuisine. "It was really good, and mostly vegetarian. Dishes look different, but many are similar in taste to Turkish dishes." He enjoyed injera, a bread made with tess, an ancient, iron-rich grain. "It looks like a spongy crepe, and you use it to scoop and soak up even liquidy foods without using a spoon."
While he remained at the university in Addis during the semester, Bilgen took more than 20 flights to Abu Shabi and Dubai in the UAE; Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey; and Shanghai, Sujou, and Jhuhai in China before the semester formally began.
He most enjoyed his visits to Abu Shabi and Dubai. "Both were new, modern, and extremely clean cities. I live in New York, so just going there was really refreshing," he says.
Looking ahead, Bilgen predicts that as a result of his sabbatical experience, many more exchanges between students and faculty of AAiT and SoE will develop.
