France and CDEFI honored at the Engineering Week in Colombia

The Engineering Week in Colombia is an international academic event organized by the Colombian association of Engineering Faculties (ACOFI) that took place from 17^th to 21^st September 2018 in Bogotá and Cartagena.

This year, the guest country was France and on that occasion, Marc Renner, President of CDEFI, made the trip to Colombia with about fifteen representatives from French schools or schools networks of engineering such as ParisTech, the Federation Gay-Lussac, Centrale Nantes, EPF engineering school, IMT Atlantique, etc.

During the inauguration of the Student Fair for the Engineering Studies in Bogota, on 17^th September, Marc Renner recalled the strengths of the academic and scientific cooperation between France and Colombia in the engineering area and renewed CDEFI support to the 2017-2019 objectives defined in Lyon in 2017 during the Franco-Colombian meetings of academic cooperation : strengthening and rebalancing of the student mobility, projects development on common topics such as sustainable development, promotion of decentralized cooperation and development of bilateral ecosystems of research and innovation.

The event continued in Bogotá until 18^th September with visits of industrial sites and a meeting with representatives from Colombian ministries for Education, Information and Communication Technologies, and Environment and Sustainable Development. 

Then some members of the French delegation flew to the Caribbean cost, to Cartagena, from 19^th to 21^st September to participate in the International Meeting of the Engineering Education whose topic was the management, the quality and the development in the faculties and schools of engineering. This event gathered a great number of participants from Colombian faculties of engineering, French schools of engineering as well as French companies established in Colombia. At the beginning of the meeting, Marc Renner highlighted the importance of the quality assurance in the policy and strategy of the French schools of engineering and the participation of companies in the operation and implementation of training courses. Those guarantee the adequacy between the training and the needs of socio-economic world.

These three days were characterized by bilateral meetings, visits of sites, conferences and round tables about the sustainable development, the links between the companies and the faculties and schools of engineering, the challenges of the biomedical industry, etc.