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Liangmei Hu describes life in America and what lessons she wants to take home to China.

Perspective: Hefei, Anhui province, People’s Republic of China

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Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in western China, is known for its science and research, spearheaded by Hefei University of Technology, former Hefei Polytechnic University, which was coined by Chairman Mao Zedong.

Hefei, which translates to “junction of the Fei rivers,” is a confluence of other researchers as well. It has the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and the National Laboratory for Nuclear Fusion Research. The recent rise in college students and technological industries sprouting up around the city’s exterior are just beginning to erase the poverty that has been a mainstay for the provincial capital.

For more information, prospective visitors can visit the city’s Web site.

The entrance to the Hefei University of Technology.

Photo courtesy of the Anhui Province government.

For the visiting scholar, U.S. and China have key differences in the classroom

Denton is a far cry from Hefei, China to Liangmei Hu for a lot of different reasons. The atmosphere, the teaching methods and the space are all different.

Hu first met UNT professor of computer science and engineering Bill Buckles in China when he went on a trip there four years ago with a team of German and British academics to evaluate the graduate programs of three universities. One of those universities was the Hefei University of Technology, which was hosting an international conference on environmental technology. In 2007 she applied to the China Scholarship Council for and got a one-year scholarship.

Amid the labyrinth of hallways in Discovery Park, formerly Research Park, on the outskirts of Denton, is where she spent the past year doing research. The visiting scholar is like a hydra with several brains: They must be a student, a teacher, an assistant researcher and still keep in contact with students and faculty back home.

She said one of the biggest differences between being a teacher here and in China is the size of the classes and how freely students can ask questions.

“Students have more chance to have discussions in class,” Hu said of the classes at UNT. “In China we had to ask a teacher questions after class.”

She said class sizes were much different too. At the Hefei University of Technology, her classes could have 80 students, but UNT they usually top off at about 30 people.

Hu said she wants to encourage more discussion in her classes upon returning to China, teach with more projects and help teach more bilingual courses with more American English, as opposed to the British English she and other students learned.

In China, Hu studied digital imaging, taking data from Light Detection and Ranging instruments, or LiDAR, which works like radar. She and other researchers compile the data, which contractors gather with a $2 million dollar sensor inside a plane. They look at topographic layouts, mostly of a Pre-Katrina New Orleans, and digitally chart the elevation and dips of the land, its flood plains and river basins. It’s more CT scan than photograph, with its falsely colored, smooth landscapes and cities.

The planes fly about six kilometers above the ground and send out pulses that can beam back detail down to the millimeter in some cases. It takes about two to three years to map a state as the planes fly in parallel patterns, much as one mows a front lawn. The original technology is about fifty years old, but has made strides since the invention of global positioning and airplane navigation systems, which let planes fly more accurately. The latter must be licensed by the government and are not available to the public. Developers and the government both contract the imaging to understand where to build and understand flooding and wind damage. Cities will pay about 90 cents per building charted. In a roughly 20,000 building city like New Orleans, that means about $18,000.

“I think that municipalities benefit the most because they have so many processes of people measuring in the field,” Buckles said. “This technology replaces that.”

The digital imaging that Buckles and Hu use have been at UNT for about five years.

Hu’s last day in the U.S. before heading back to China was Dec. 2. She didn’t take any time off and worked the day before her more than 20- hour flight back over the Pacific. Her stay was a year-long but if she has one wish.

“I want more people to know about the visiting scholars program,” she said.