Kyushu Institute of Technology SEIC

The Space Engineering International Course (SEIC) at Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) in Kitakyushu, Japan is an innovative graduate program founded in 2011 that builds space capability in developing nations by guiding international students through the complete process of designing, building, testing, and launching their home country's first satellite. The program's signature achievement is the BIRDS (Building, Integrating, Researching, Developing, and Sending) multinational CubeSat constellation project. Each BIRDS cohort brings together students from several developing nations with no prior satellite program — Ghana, Nigeria, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Philippines, Malaysia, Paraguay, Japan — who build 1U CubeSats together in Japan that then become each nation's first satellite in orbit, typically deployed from the International Space Station via JAXA's JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD). BIRDS-1 (2017) placed the first satellites from Ghana (GhanaSat-1), Nigeria, Mongolia, and Bangladesh into orbit. Subsequent BIRDS generations have expanded to new countries, with over 20 nations gaining their first spaceflight experience through the program under the supervision of Prof. Mengu Cho. SEIC's model has become a globally recognized template for developing-nation space capacity building.