Trianon Panels at SPIEF 2019

6 June 2019

On June 6th a panel of the Trianon Dialogue, the French-Russian civil society forum, devoted to the «Education of the Future» took place at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The experts from the two countries discussed the acute issues and challenges as well as best practices in higher education such as exchange programs and networking, development of university campuses and clusters, implementing innovations.

The co-chairs of the Trianon Dialogue Anatoly Torkunov and Pierre Morel, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian Technology Foundation Dominique Fache, the Director of International Relations of the Conservatoire National Des Arts et Metiers Sebastien Leonsel, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Orange Group Gervais Pellissier, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Siradel SAS Laurent Bouillot and the Executive Vice President for Industry Solutions, Marketing, Global Affairs and Communications of Dassault Systemes SE Florence Verzelen, the Director General of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center Valery Fedorov, the Rector of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology State University Nikolay Kudryavtsev, the Rector of Tomsk State University Eduard Galazhinsky, the Rector of the Higher School of Economics Yaroslav Kuzminov and the Rector of Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics Igor Maksimtsev and BCG Director Anton Stepanenko were speakers at this panel. The discussion was moderated by the General Director of Franco-Russian Chamber of Commerce Pavel Сhinsky.

The MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov told about the experience of promoting young experts and initiatives, about the Trianon Startups project, which was a meeting of Russian startups with French companies that happened in April this year in Versailles. The meeting was initiated by the member of the Coordination Council of the Dialogue, founder and General Director of the Opal IT-agency Euryale Chatelard with the support from the President and Chairman of the Total Board of Directors Patrick Pouyanné. «The next meeting of young leaders will be held on November 13th-16th. The initiative was supported by Societe General and Sberbank. We are still thinking about the venue», said Anatoly Torkunov.

When speaking about the upcoming events in 2019, Anatoly Torkunov mentioned a session on engineering training which will be organized at the international industrial exhibition INOPROM in early July in Yekaterinburg and a special meeting of young architects who design campuses at the Moscow Urban Forum. «The interest of the French industry in the Russian system of education is obvious. We have already reached specific arrangements with such companies as Dassault Systèmes, Orange. We hope that Sanofi will soon join this list. The agreement with the French pharmaceutical company will signal a shift to the next year’s topic within the framework of the Trianon dialogue, which will be healthcare», stressed the MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov.

«As the Rector of the University whose budget consists of 75% of private funding, I wanted to say that MGIMO believes that it’s possible to train experts for bilateral cooperation. For example, two thousand students in our institution study French, there are three MA programmes with French universities, French is a language studied at the Schools with „applied“ majors such as the School of International Law, the School of International Economic Relations as well as at such innovative programmes as Strategic Management of International Commodity Companies, World Agricultural Markets, Digital Economy. All of them are presented here, at our stand in Pavilion G», noted Anatoly Torkunov.

The Rectors of the Russian universities shared their experiences of cooperation with the French universities in the context of globalisation, tougher competition and launching educational startups. Valery Fedorov presented the research done by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center entitled «How Russian Youth Perceive French Education» available at the platform of the Trianon dialogue and the Public Opinion Research Center website.

The discussion of the most promising tracks of bilateral cooperation in economy, investment and implementation of new technologies continued at the «Russia and France» business-dialogue panel.

The MGIMO French Department headed by Mikhail Ogorodov contributed to the work of the Russian-French panels.