“My classes are an enlightening exercise in improvisation”

A chance meeting changed his life – and, by extension, the lives of hundreds of students. Simon Henein discovered modern dance in 2000, shortly after obtaining a PhD from EPFL, and practiced it intensively for several years. He was inspired by the way improvisation in modern dance could be used as a form of artistic expression. Henein founded a dance company in 2013 to explore instantaneous composition in dance and music. Yet he’s always stayed true to engineering, drawing on his practice of modern dance to inform his engineering research and his teaching for nearly 20 years.

Henein, whose mother is Swiss and father Egyptian, grew up on the outskirts of Cairo and attended the city’s French high school. “Living in Cairo, you constantly face logistical problems like power outages and broken water pumps,” he says. “When I was little, I really wanted to learn all about the engineering behind these systems. Whenever an electrician or plumber came to our house, I flooded him with questions!” When it came time to choose a major in college, Henein hesitated between mechanical engineering and microengineering. “Today, thanks to micromechanical engineering, I can do both!” He eventually selected microengineering and graduated with a master’s degree from EPFL, followed by a PhD in technical science.

It was during his PhD, when Henein was just 25 years old, that he was propelled into the world of teaching. “My thesis supervisor decided to take a sabbatical year and informed me that I would be teaching his microengineering class for a semester.” Henein suddenly found himself in front of an intimidating classroom of students barely younger than he was. “I loved it!” he says, even though “I hardly had time for anything else” apart from preparing and giving his lectures. Now an associate professor at EPFL’s Micromechanical and Horological Design Laboratory (Instant-Lab), Henein is just as enthusiastic as ever: “If I had to choose between teaching and research – which would be a shame – I’d pick teaching in a heartbeat.”

Intuition as a guide

When asked to sum up his novel approach to teaching, Henein replies: “collective creation.” For instance, he gives one of his classes at the Arsenic center of modern performing art in Lausanne. There, he applies the improvisation techniques used in the performing arts to methods for engineering design. At the end of the year, students are required to give a public performance that incorporates their technical creations.

“Design is a lot harder to teach to engineering students than modeling or simulation, because the students have to learn how to start from a blank page,” says Henein. “Even excellent students can find themselves paralyzed.” Not one for false modesty, he goes on to say: “That’s my strength as a teacher – I bring something new to the table.” He adds that his approach isn’t derived from an existing teaching method. “I simply trust my field experience and follow my intuition,” he says. Henein also frequently brings in outside speakers, such as artists, a sociologist and a mathematician.

“By taking students outside the classroom and bringing them into a theater, you get them away from the dry, theoretical academic setting and remove the pressure of everyday life that can inhibit the creative process.” As a result, students “are happier when they work – and consequently learn better,” says Henein. He calls this class “improgineering,” and it’s given in the form of workshops. What sets it apart is the personal contribution made by each student.

Untapped potential

Only a small fraction of Henein’s students take his improgineering class. Most of them are enrolled in his more conventional microengineering classes given in large lecture halls. But there too, the professor draws on techniques learned in the performing arts. “I move around a lot and use my body and voice as instruments,” he says. “And I encourage my students to do the same.” Together, his 160–200 students, dozen student assistants and eight teaching assistants – along with Henein himself – comprise a broad assortment of age and experience that encourages “shared learning through an enlightening, semester-long exercise in improvisation.”

Henein believes that improvisation in general and collective creation in particular could be used well beyond microengineering, in any field with a creative element. “Or in other words, in all types of engineering,” he says. But what about the sciences? “To me, engineering is about inventing objects to meet a specific need, whereas science is about studying the mechanisms behind those objects,” he says. Yet he admits that “my approach might be harder to apply in science.” Harder, yes, but not impossible. “I’d really love to give it a try!”