On 13 – 14 September a delegation of 25 members of China’s Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) visited UIC Headquarters. The delegation, composed of professors and students, was led by the Vice President Professor Feng (Mrs). SWJTU – one of four railway universities in China – has signed a cooperation agreement with UIC. The information session in Paris was jointly prepared by the UIC Passenger and High Speed Department (led by Ignacio Barron) and the UIC Expertise Development Division (led by Nathalie Amirault).

After the delegation was welcomed by UIC Director-General Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, a succession of presentations took place to present the scope of international railway cooperation activities within UIC. The following fields of activity were successively addressed by UIC HQ members: general presentation of UIC (Paul Véron), Institutional Relations and activities of the Asian Region (Vincent Vu), Passenger and High Speed activities (Ignacio Barron, Dirk Oelschläger, Marc Guigon, Takumi Ishii), Rail System Department, technical activities, standardisation (Hans Günther Kersten, Gianfranco Cau), activities of the Fundamental Values Department (Jerzy Wisniewski and Heads of Divisions of this department).

The next activity to take place in the frame of the cooperation agreement will be the organisation of a second training session, to be held at SWJTU from 19 – 23 November 2012.