Prof. Edward Crawley, Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering Visited BJTU

On the morning of March 18, 2015, President NING Bin met with the delegation led by Prof. Edward Crawley, President of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia. He is also the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Member and Professor from MIT. Vice President CHEN Feng and ZHA Jianzhong, Chair-holder of the UNESCO Chair on Cooperation between Higher Engineering Education and Industries and Professor from the School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering were present at the meeting.



First, NING Bin extended welcome to Prof. Crawley on behalf of the University and reviewed the long history of close collaboration between BJTU and Russian universities. He said the Chinese and Russian governments have placed great importance on bilateral economic and cultural exchanges in recent years. In this context, Beijing Jiaotong University attaches great importance to the implementation of China’s initiatives of “One Belt, One Road” and “Going Global”. Giving full play to our advantage in high-speed railway, we have strengthened all-round cooperation with Russian transport universities. He introduced the joint education institute between BJTU and St. Petersburg State Transport University. Then, he pointed out that China had been carrying out comprehensive reform in universities. Hence, we are keen to learn the experience of the world leading CDIO engineering education from Skoltech so as to give the impetus to the development of engineering education of BJTU. He hoped that both sides would further expand exchange and cooperation with the opportunity of Prof. Crawley’s visit.



Prof. Crawley expressed gratitude to BJTU for the hospitality and introduced the internationalization effort, teaching, scientific research of Skoltech and the experience of breaking the traditional pattern of engineering education and exploring the cooperation between higher engineering education and industries. Before his visit to BJTU, HAO Ping, the Vice Minister of Education met him and spoke highly of the school-running mode of Skoltech and would provide government scholarship for students from BJTU, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University to study at Skoltech. Prof. Crawley expressed his welcome to BJTU students from the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, School of Computer and Information Technology, School of Electrical Engineering and School of Science.

Principals from the Office of Academic Affairs, Graduate School, Office of Graduates Affairs and Office of International Affairs were also present at the meeting.



In the afternoon, Prof. Crawley made a presentation titled “CDIO in the Design of a University for the 21st Century-Skoltech as a case” chaired by Prof. ZHA Jianzhong. Over 200 teachers and students attended this symposium.