The Worldwide Energy University Network (WEUN), a voluntary global organization of energy universities initiated by China University of Petroleum-Beijing (CUPB), declared its establishment on September 22th, 2018. 28 energy universities form 16 countries, including China, USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, UAE, Vietnam and Malaysia signed the Declaration of Worldwide Energy University Network.
Under the background of globalization, CUPB initiated to establish WEUN in March, 2018, to create a global education community in energy field, promote the communication and cooperation between universities from different countries and regions focusing on oil and gas, and serve economic growth and social progress. It proposed to share resources and achieve multilateral benefit within WEUN to collaboratively enhance the development of researches and talent cultivation in energy field. WEUN would contribute to the construction of “community of shared future” by promoting the exchanges in academic, economic and cultural aspects.
CUPB, a research university with distinctive characteristic in petroleum, firmly implements international strategy under which the cooperation scale has been constantly expended in recent years. The multi-level, multi-field and multi-channel exchanges and cooperative relations have been established with more than 170 universities and enterprises from developed countries such as the USA, France, UK, Canada and Japan. As a result, its expansion of international influence has laid a solid foundation for the establishment of WEUN.
On the first plenary session of WEUN, the members discussed the Constitution of WEUN and voted the units of Executive Committee, headquarters setting, logo proposal and other issues. Subsequently, the nameplate of WEUN was unveiled by Shan Honghong, the Chancellor of CUPB, Zhang Laibin, the President of CUPB, Martynov Victor, the Rector of Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas and Matthias Ruth, the Vice-president of University of Alberta together.
As a non-legally binding voluntary global network of energy universities, WEUN will promote the communication and systematical cooperation of scientific research, education, talent cultivation and social activities between the members under the trend of global energy development. It will conduct more concrete collaboration for students and teachers such as student training, resource sharing, academic exchanges, scientific research, teacher-student exchanges and platforms building and help the members to produce high-grade talents for energy industry and improve the international competence.
(Edited by Lu Ji)