1.

INTRODUCTION

There are many ways how to join companies in education and training. The way of joining is important primarily in case of the technical university. Graduates from these universities are usually working not as research and development workers, but as engineers and technicians in service at firms and companies. Nowadays endeavor concerning the joining of the company and firm professionals in education and training are heavily supported through many projects and grants, but it acts mostly about “artificial joining” without complying with economic relationships. The cooperations are based on personal acquaintanceships and attachments. Why the direct joining of the companies professionals in education is not functioning well?

However, the problems are also on the university side. What is the typical scheme of teacher´s and lecturer´s creation?

What is the consequence?

Both worlds – company world and the university world are drawing apart quickly. It describes the situation for the Middle and Eastern Europe, where we know the problem, we hope that it does not describe the general state.

2.

OWN COMPANY AS A SOLUTION

We are trying to display one possible approach to solving this problem in the field of study “Photonics and photonic communications” at our university.

Our team (under prof. Vasinek leadership) has 17 members in a structure:

One professor

One associate professor

Five assistant professors

Four researchers

Six graduate students

One financial manager

Approximately six years ago, our team was functioning according to scheme mentioned above. We were leading 15-20 students per year that have gone to firms and companies as engineers and technicians and 1-2 students that were continuing in doctorate study.

During our meetings with the many top company management that are employing our students, we were listening to complaints concerning the unsuitable structure of knowledge, ignorance of company processes. We were listening to the good knowledge of photonics and optical communications but poor knowledge of wider contexts.

We are trying to make it clearer on an example of one application of fiber optic sensors for escapes monitoring of dangerous gases from the middle-pressure pipelines, see Figure 1. The solution obtained several awards at the international exhibitions of patents and innovations.

Figure 1.

Students during optical fiber preparation for DTS measurement

The principle of solution is based on the cooling of metallic pipelines during the adiabatic expansion that creates during pipeline breakages, Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Mounting of optical fiber for pipeline monitoring

There is the optical fiber wounded around the pipeline, and the distributed temperature measurement via Raman scattering is used. The separate photonic application represents about 15-20% of the whole problém. The rest consists of safety questions, knowledge of installations, thermodynamics, heat transfer, knowledge of the properties of surroundings, pipelines mechanics, and so forth.

It is impossible to want the students could solve such problems, but they should know that these problems exist and without their successful managing, it is impracticable to apply this or another photonic system.

It is very important for students to be aware of significant problems despite it is no direct relationship with photonics. What is functioning in the laboratory might not and usually does not working in the industrial application.

The searching for answers to such questions how to persuade the students about the importance of study not only the photonics but the other branches leads us to start a firm that is created with the same people as in university laboratory. Only economists completed the staff.

With the floatation of our firm, we created a quite new situation. Our students are working together with us; they do the same activities, Figures 3, 4. It means that our students meet their educators both during direct teaching but also during job orders and their solutions. What are the consequences?

Figure 3.

Principle of the Distributed Temperature System

Figure 4.

Monitoring results during the time

What types of job orders our students meet and solve?

Figure 5.

Fiber optical axle counter

Figure 6.

Monitoring of the train movements

Figure 7.

Monitoring of vital activity

Figure 8.

Signals of heart activity – upper, classic ECG, Bragg grating monitor, Michelson interferometer

Figure 9.

Fiber optical probe for magnetic field measurement (scheme, layout, real sensor, results)

3.

CONCLUSION

The process mentioned above displays new possibilities for the joining firms and companies to the education process. As the best solution, it appears the tightest collaboration among students, graduates, and educators. This collaboration increases the knowledge and skills of students to a higher level; it helps to create humankind linkage among educators and students. Students are better prepared for their future jobs in the industry.