In February 2023, Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) summer undergraduate interns Soham Gaggenapally and Alan Deutsch visited Tokyo, Japan along with graduate student Yume Menghe Xu. The Japanese company Mobile Internet Technology Co., LTD. that makes Mind Render was happy with the work done by Soham and Alan. Mind Render and another Japanese company that does STEAM education, Viling. Inc, invited Soham, Alan, and Yume to Japan for an eight day visit. 

Over the summer of 2022, Soham and Alan worked on connecting Mind Render (software for young people to program games in a 3D world) with LEGO SPIKE Prime. With Mind Render, you can drive a car on the screen with a physical handle made with LEGO SPIKE Prime’s hub. When you tilt the handle, the hub sends readings of gyro and acceleration sensors to Mind Render and manipulates the car on the screen.

During their visit, they exchanged ideas with Japanese educators on STEAM education. They shared what Tufts CEEO values in engineering education and some trends in engineering education research. They also did two Novel Engineering workshops with children using the storybook Peter’s Chair. The children used locally sourced craft materials to build solutions for Peter and tested their designs using Teddy Bears to represent Peter.