KTH cooperates with Tokyo University
Education and research in the future imposes new and harder demands on universities throughout the world. In order to meet these demands, the prestigious Tokyo University has created a forum, which provides the possibility of exchanging knowledge between different countries’ universities. Besides the initiator of the idea, KTH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The University of California, Berkeley are among the participants.
An engineer’s role in continuous change with continuously renewed work assignments and increased global competition among universities are two future challenges for the world’s universities. In order to more easily deal with these new demands, Tokyo University has invited deans and presidents from the world’s most distinguished technical universities to participate in a forum.
“KTH’s interest in participating in the forum primarily derives from the fact that we can, in this way, establish closer ties with the other top international universities. If we increase the exchange between faculties, students and other personnel with these universities in this way, we stand to gain a lot. Cooperation within the forum offers the absolute best contacts and opportunities,” says Peter Gudmundson, President of KTH.
The purpose of the forum, among other things, is to discuss in more detail the problems that arise with technical training courses and to exchange knowledge on internationalisation – in order to promote exchange studies for example.
“When it comes down to education, I think that KTH has quite a lot to contribute. It is always interesting how education can be linked to the commercial and industrial life of the future which is subject to an increasingly global competitiveness,” says Peter Gudmundson.
He receives support from Takehiko Kitamori, Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Tokyo University.
“KTH is a valuable participant with considerable knowledge on exchange students, studies and research, and in this context, an important representative of the Nordic region,” says Takehiko Kitamori.
Takehiko Kitamori adds that it is of extreme importance that the world’s leading technical universities talk to each other and discuss the problems they encounter, this is because the world is becoming increasingly international.
“In order for us to maintain our top positions as universities, it is important that we cooperate. But this will also be of benefit to the students, they will become more attractive on the labour market if they have been exchange students,” says Takehiko Kitamori.
The universities participating in the forum include KTH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Imperial College London, Tokyo University and the University of California, Berkeley.
For more information, contact KTH’s President Peter Gudmundson, ring 08 - 790 70 01 or email rektor@kth.se.
Peter Larsson