As part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2010 between UIC and SWJTU (Southwest Jiaotong University) in Chengdu city, (Sichuan province) China, the UIC Expertise Development Unit organised a three-day training session at two SWJTU campuses from 23 – 25 November 2011.
SWJTU is a national multi-disciplinary university with a focus on engineering and rail transportation. With its 17 schools covering all railway disciplines, it counts as one of the leading railway universities in China, with approximately 50,000 students and three campuses measuring 5000 acres in total.
SWJTU is also a research-oriented university and endeavours to promote scientific and technological innovation, hence having been nominated three times among the “top 10 Science and Technology Advances of Higher Education in China” and having received a national award for scientific and technological progress.
The three-day international training session, partly financed by the Chinese Ministry of Education, is part of a three-year training programme. It addressed hundreds of students, the majority composed of undergraduates and, to a lesser extent, postgraduate students. UIC is uniquely placed to provide the relevant international technical expertise to fulfil the training mission.
The selected lectures for the first training sessions were drawn from UIC’s vast pool of expertise and represent current issues for railways worldwide.
UIC was able to offer experts addressing the following issues: railway risk management, control command and signalling (CCS), developing and enhancing maintenance: presentation of the results of the INNOTRACK (Innovative Track Systems) project, MAGLEV (magnetic levitation), high speed systems – including a session dedicated to high speed safety/security, and e-business applications (collaborative electronic information exchange in the railway industry).
The lecturers, who were selected from UIC, Italy (Trenitalia), France (SNCF) and Japan (Tokyo University), delivered presentations in two different locations, thus addressing several hundreds of students.
All of the lecturers addressed many questions raised by the students and were highly impressed by their enthusiasm and interest.
