The Institute of Technology at the University of Washington Tacoma - UWT is expanding its international cooperation by hosting Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students in the Computer Engineering and Systems program. In the first research project originated from this cooperation we propose a generic and scalable system, based on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Using the data acquired from the sensor nodes this system will be able to take simple decisions, such as turn on/off heater and lights and help in other more complex decisions, such as rearranging rooms based on the occupancy. These actions aim to save resources and make buildings more comfortable and efficient. In this paper we describe how this research project is being structured and conducted in order to maximize the cooperation between Brazilian and UWT researchers. Also, we show which strategies are being adopted to make the project scalable and generic. This will allow us to aggregate multi-disciplinary people and make the knowledge and technology produced to be reusable by future project members.