(Tsinghua News Center) Professor Burkhard Rauhut, Rector of the RWTH (Rheinisch-Wesfalische Technische Hockschule) Aachen, made his second visit to Tsinghua on April 13, speaking to a dozen faculty and administrative staff on research-intensive engineering education and its internationalization.

Using the RWTH Aachen’s educational and administrative reform of recent years as an example, Rector Rauhut shared the school’s experiences in developing research and teaching activities in engineering education. He argued that nowadays a leading world university should be able to create new technologies that can benefit the knowledge economy.

He noted that the ongoing educational reform should focus on strengthening existing connections with national and local industry. He also stressed the importance of recruiting high-qualified faculty with experience in industry, either in areas dealing with basic or applied science .

Professor Rauhut put special emphasis on the importance of building connections with leading universities all over the world. RWTH Aachen, together with several other leading European educational institutions and research centers of science and technology, has developed a project called IDEA, a high-level network designed to forge closer communication between research faculty and students.

Professor Rauhut has been rector of RWTH Aachen since 1999. Born in 1942, he became a professor of mathematics at the age of 31, and was appointed chairman of the Department of Statistics and Industrial Mathematics, and Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences at RWTH Aachen in the 1990s.

In the 1960s, he was editor of the journal Methods of Operations Research, and a board member of the Society of Mathematics, Economics and Operations Research.

Vice President Gong Ke hosted the speech. Following it, President Gu Binglin met with Rector Rauhut in the President’s Office.

Reported by Weiwei