On August 23, the International Centre for Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO (ICEE) successfully completed two consulting and research projects for the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). The projects are titled “Research on Important Issues of China’s Engineer System” and “Research on Strategies of Global Engineering Education Database Construction”. Both projects passed the third comprehensive performance evaluation of CAE strategic research and consulting projects in 2023.

ZHENG Weimin, a member of CAE and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, leads the project titled “Research on Some Problems of China’s Engineer System”. Starting from the international mutual recognition of China’s engineer vocational qualifications, the project team deeply analyzed the influencing factors of the international mutual recognition of Chinese engineers. By reviewing the engineer systems in countries or regions in Europe, America and Asia-Pacific region and interviewing heads of government authorities in three important engineering fields, namely water conservancy and hydropower, construction and transportation, the project team found some important issues in China’s current engineer system. They subsequently put forward corresponding policy recommendations. This research is of great value to advancing the evaluation of engineering capacity of engineers, improving the registered engineer system in China, promoting the international mutual recognition and mobility of Chinese engineers, and serving the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative.

HE You, a member of CAE and a professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, leads the project titled “Research on Strategies of Global Engineering Education Database Construction”. Considering both the development trend of global engineering science and technology and the current status and challenges of data capacity building in education field, the project team conducted in-depth research on issues such as database architecture, the long-term data collection mechanism and the organizational guarantee mechanism of database construction, and put forward strategies and recommendations for the development of the global engineering education database. This research is of great significance for understanding the development status and trend of engineering education in the world and supporting the policy-making and management decision-making of engineering education at home and abroad.

WANG Sunyu, professor of the Institute of Education at Tsinghua University and deputy director & secretary general of ICEE; QIAO Weifeng, associate professor of research of ICEE; postdoctoral fellows PAN Xiaochun, FU Jie and HE Shiyu; research assistants ZHU Pan and LI Jingjing attended the project review meeting as members of the project team.