[Editor’s Note] On December 6, 2022, Ms. Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, sent a video message as the opening address. Sharmila highly recognized the excellent work that ICEE has been doing in cooperation with UNESCO. In her message, she mentioned that ICEE has become one of the most active category II centres of UNESCO and hoped to continue the in-depth cooperation with ICEE. The following texts are compiled from the speech.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will be vital to tackle the global challenges we face today. These include climate change and the necessary transition to sustainable energy, and the need for stronger international cooperation to force the peace and sustainable development. At UNESCO, science and engineering have always played an essential role in our programs. But our mandate is even more important today. One of UNESCO strategic objectives for this decade is to work towards sustainable societies and to protect the environment, for the promotion of science, technology, engineering, and natural heritage. To this end, UNESCO will continue to support all of its member state efforts to improve engineering curricula, strengthen engineering research, and attract more people to the field of engineering, particularly women.

At UNESCO, we have a formidable alley in this task, and I'm referring here to all our network of independent centres of excellence, which operate under the auspices of UNESCO, just like the International Centre for Engineering Education. All of these category II centres are valued resource. They align with UNESCO programmatic priorities to amplify our own efforts to promote sustainable development. At the same time, these international regional centres of excellence provide the technical assistance and services to UNESCO member states and our partners across the world. 

The International Centre for Engineering Education has been one of the most active category II centres of UNESCO. The International Centre for Engineering Education has been focusing on major issues, such as the quality and the equity of engineering education across the world, especially in developing countries. We at UNESCO, we applaud the International Centre for Engineering Education, for having established a network for innovation in education and the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in engineering education.

On behalf of UNESCO, I congratulate you on your multiple research projects. This has strengthened not only partnerships with UNESCO and with other category II centres, international organizations, but all partners across the world. ICEE have also been very active in other areas. The International Center for Engineering Education played a key role in developing the second UNESCO engineering report in 2021 with the theme of Engineering, the SDGS. UNESCO acknowledges the valuable contributions on substantive and financial of ICEE, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Engineering in leading the UNESCO flagship engineering report. 

We shall not be able to reach the sustainable development goals without engineering. Engineering is part of our everyday lives, but we are currently do not have enough engineers to get the job done. We therefore need to train more and we look forward to working with you. For its part, UNESCO’s own engineering program is encouraging engineers and scientists from all over the world to work together, to adopt what is called a systems approach to tackling global challenges.

Only by adopting the systems thinking we will be able to understand the complexity of the planet we call home. As you can see, it is enormous potential for closer collaboration with the International Centre for Engineering Education. UNESCO looks forward to deepening its ties with ICEE. I thank you sincerely and congratulate ICEE for the excellent work in collaboration with UNESCO.