Jubilee International Polytechnic Week kicked off at Polytechnic University

More than 130 participants from Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Russia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan joined the 10th International Polytechnic Week. For the first time in a long time, a large-scale international forum was held in a face-to-face format. Representatives of more than two dozen universities and organizations took part in open discussions, round tables, thematic seminars and working meetings.

Traditionally, the International Polytechnic Week began with the Plenary Session, which was attended by representatives of SPbPU, St. Petersburg Government and partner universities. In his welcoming remarks, Dmitry Arseniev, Vice-Rector for International Affairs of SPbPU, noted that despite the difficult geopolitical situation, a great number of friends from all over the world came to the Polytechnic University. Polytech is a leader not only in the field of engineering education, but also in the development of good-neighborly broad relations and partnership networks with universities from almost all continents, stressed Dmitry Arseniev, you will have a rich program — both working and cultural, and I hope this week will give you the opportunity to meet friends, find new partners and colleagues and actively spend time.

International Polytechnic Week 2023 has a special meaning for SPbPU: it has not only become a jubilee week, but it also takes place on the eve of the 125th anniversary of Polytechnic University. The Vice-Rector for International Affairs invited the participants to the celebration of the anniversary of SPbPU, which will take place at the beginning of 2024.

Yuri Snisarenko, the Director of St. Petersburg Scientific, Technical and Innovation Support Foundation, addressed the participants on behalf of the St. Petersburg Government. He emphasized that science and higher education in St. Petersburg have a key social and economic importance, being the largest industry by the number of employed people. Today hundreds of thousands of people study and work, do research and development. There is no doubt that international and interregional cooperation is a key area for us, said Yuri Snisarenko.

St. Petersburg has a wide range of long-term relationships with Russian and foreign cities. In spite of the above mentioned geopolitical problems, the city is still attractive for foreign students. Last year, their number in the city of the Neva increased and exceeded 35 thousand people. And this is only those who study in the main educational programs. For many years St. Petersburg has retained its status as a historical capital of science and higher education in Russia, with a serious scientific and research potential, which is being developed by advanced scientific organizations, including, according to Yuri Snisarenko, Polytechnic University. Continuing this theme, Sergei Salkutsan, Director of the Digital Engineering Center for Continuing Professional Education of the Advanced Engineering School (AES SPbPU) presented to the participants the experience of the AES in the implementation of Digital Engineering project. Let us remind that in 2022, SPbPU was among the winners of the federal project for creating Advanced Engineering Schools. 30 universities from 15 regions of the Russian Federation received the grant support. The main goal of the AES SPbPU is to solve frontline problems for the high-tech industry and train specialists with world-class competencies. The program is aimed at joint work with industrial partners in the field of systems digital engineering. Today, the state corporations Rosatom and Rostec, Gazprom Neft, and many others are partners of SPbPU’s AES.

The importance of training well-qualified personnel was emphasized in the report by Yuri Klochkov, SPbPU Vice-Rector for Scientific and Organizational Activities. He emphasized Polytechnic University’s exclusive right to independently award academic degrees — a corresponding decree was published by the Russian Government in 2018. Polytechnic University has the right to conduct attestation for the awarding of candidate and doctoral degrees, create dissertation councils and establish their authority. This has served to increase SPbPU’s attractiveness not only among Russian young scientists, but also on the part of foreign scientists: every year the university becomes more and more popular among foreign postgraduate students. This is largely due to the mechanisms implemented at SPbPU to attract young scientists to the university, including through the Open Doors international competition of the Global Universities Association. Ekaterina Belyaevskaya, head of SPbPU Department for International University Cooperation, spoke about them in detail. Today, SPbPU is one of the clear leaders in the overall statistics for the «Postraduate School» track. Thirty-nine foreign postgraduate students — a seventh of all winners nationwide — have chosen Polytechnic University. The number of supervisors from SPbPU who are ready to accept foreign graduate students, including English-language graduate programs, is also steadily increasing. This information provoked considerable interest on the part of our foreign colleagues, who stressed the importance of developing partnerships in the area of postgraduate education. This idea was expressed in the report of the Vice Rector of Jilin University (PRC) Zheng Weitao, who also spoke about open cooperation, joint promotion of high-quality training of talents and scientific and technological innovation. Kadyrgali Dzhamanbalin, Rector of Kostanai Socio-Technical University, spoke about joint educational programs and research projects with Russian and Kazakh universities. He stressed the importance of creation of branches of Russian universities in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan: according to the rector of KSTU they are an effective mechanism to stop the «outflow» of talented young people abroad. The series of reports of the plenary session was completed with the speech of the Vice-rector for Science of Russian-Armenian University (RAU) Parkiev Avetisyan devoted to the training of highly qualified personnel and scientific and technical cooperation of RAU with the leading partner universities and research centers of the Russian Federation. A separate part of his speech was devoted to the strategic partnership with Polytechnic University — the universities have a long history of cooperation and dozens of implemented projects, including joint laboratories.

At the end of the plenary session, a ceremony of signing cooperation agreements was held: the Osh University of Technology (Kyrgyzstan) and the Université Privée Ahmed Baba (Republic of Mali) became new partners of Polytechnic University. The agreements were signed on behalf of SPbPU by Vice-Rector for International Affairs Dmitry Arseniev, and on behalf of the universities of Kyrgyzstan and the Republic of Mali by Vice-Rector for State Language Ashim Zulpuev and President Ousmane Dramé respectively. Polytechnic University signed an updated partnership agreement with another university, Jilin University (China), which was signed by the Vice Rector for International Affairs of SPbPU and Vice Rector of Jilin University Zheng Weitao.

On the same day, a roundtable discussion on «Aspects of International Cooperation Development» was held for the participants, where they discussed the prospects and opportunities for cooperation. The next days of the International Polytechnic Week will include the «Slavic Horizon 2023» summit, seminars on summer and winter schools and universities’ contribution to sustainable development, working meetings and negotiations. For students and young scientists there will be an international student competition — the Recathon robotics engineering hackathon. Read about this and more in our next news.