On November 15-18, 2021, the World Engineering Education Forum 2021 (WEEF-GEDC 2021) took place in Madrid, Spain. Organized by the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) and the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC), and jointly organized by the National Distance Education University (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED) and the Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UPM), the forum themed by “Diversity and Ethics in Education for an Inclusive and Sustainable World” was held both online and onsite.

Upon invitation by the sponsors of the forum, Prof. YUAN Si, Vice Chairperson of Tsinghua University Council and Executive Director of the International Centre for Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO (ICEE), together with the research team of ICEE, attended the UNESCO Sub-forum of the WEEF-GEDC 2021. Titled “UNESCO Engineering Report—Engineering for Sustainable Development”, the Sub-forum was co-moderated by Amal Kasry, Section Chief for Capacity Building in Basic Science and Engineering at UNESCO and Rovani Sigamoney, Engineering Programme Specialist. First, Prof. Tariq Durrani, the co-chairperson of the Advisory Board for the Engineering Report, introduced the background of the Engineering Report. Dawn Bonfield, a writer of the Report introduced the section on the diversity and women in engineering, and another writer of the Report Soma Chakrabarti introduced the section on the lifelong learning in engineering. 

Prof. YUAN Si made an introduction to the part of interregional trends in engineering, with a title of “Interregional Trends in Engineering—Promote Interregional Partnership for SDGs in engineering, why and how”, and elaborated the background, why and how to develop the interregional partnership in engineering. This part was initially proposed by Prof. YUAN and was written by the research team of ICEE. During its compilation, this section was well received, and was upgraded to be the first part of the chapter. Besides, this part also introduced the Belt and Road initiative advocated by China as one of the cases of interregional cooperation. 

Speech by Prof. YUAN Si, Executive Director of ICEE

ICEE research team members who attended the conference include Prof. WANG Sunyu and Prof. LI Manli from the Institute of Education Tsinghua University, KANG Jincheng, former Director-General for International Cooperation, Chinese Academy of Strategic Specialist of ICEE, Associate Research Fellow XIE Zheping, Assistant Research Fellow QIAO Weifeng, Dr. XU Lihui, and postdoctor WANG Yujia from Tsinghua University.