BME Builds Relationships With Prestigious Azerbaijani Universities

At the end of April, BME leaders visited Azerbaijan to hold talks regarding university cooperation. Rector Hassan Charaf, Vice Rector for International Affairs András Nemeslaki, and Director General Dávid Bauer traveled to Baku as members of a ministerial delegation.

“MOL and MVM, the two biggest comppanies of the Hungarian energy sector, both have extraction interests in Azerbaijan, so industrial and economic ties between the two countries are growing stronger. The oil and gas rich Caucasus region is becoming more important, and particularly due to the present war in Iran,” András Nemeslaki told bme.hu about the background of the visit.

He added that the impact of oil and gas revenues is clearly visible on the ground; the city of Baku is developing very rapidly, and it is evident that a great deal of money is being reinvested in regional development and education. “We visited four universities and an innovation park; even at first glance, these are ambitious, dynamically developing institutions,” said the vice rector.

from left to right: Dávid Bauer, Hassan Charaf, Tamás Torma (Hungarian Ambassador to Baku), and András Nemeslaki

Baku State University (BDU) ranks roughly on par with BME in international rankings, but is much larger, with 8 of its 16 faculties focusing on engineering. “For now, we’ve signed a general cooperation agreement, but the Azerbaijanis have indicated that they were seeking a closer partnership. They’d like to launch joint training programmes, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, as well as student exchanges.”

The other three are all private universities. One of them, Baku Higher Oil School (BANM), founded by local state oil company SOCAR, has only English-language training programmes, a modern, student-friendly infrastructure — and even a faculty member who earned their doctorate at BME. “This model also serves as a good example for MOL, the owner of BME’s maintainer company: in a university environment, how do you support R&D, so that it becomes useful in practice?”, noted professor Nemeslaki.

Elmar Gasimov, Rector of BANM, Tamás Torma, and Hassan Charaf

The Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA) initially focused on international studies; through its diplomatic background, it has an exceptionally strong network of American contacts. It has been expanding its portfolio to include engineering and computer science, and now has seven faculties. Khazar University, by contrast, has a more research-oriented profile. Representatives from these three institutions also raised the possibility of joint programmmes with BME during the discussions.

“This is a strategically interesting region; it’s worth paying attention to and building relationships there, which is all the easier since the Azeris view us as kin.

Our experience shows that students from there perform very well, and they already account for the second-largest number of applicants, not only among Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship recipients but also among self-paying students,” noted András Nemeslaki. The vice rector will soon draft a joint action plan with the faculties to move on to the next steps in the collaboration.

pg