Five postgraduate students from the China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT) have come to the St Petersburg Mining University to validate the results of their scientific research.
Four of them will spend 10 months in the city on the Neva. During this time, the young people will master the basic scientific competency "Philosophy of Science" and will carry out a series of laboratory and computational experiments necessary to increase the validity of the research they are doing. Another PRC representative, Ren Yaqiang, will take an individual course in the Russian language, after which he will be enrolled in a postgraduate course at Russia's oldest technical university on a general basis. That is, if things go well, he will stay in the northern capital for 4 years.
CUMT President Song Xuefeng underlined that "the best post-graduate students" from China University went to St. Petersburg for training, whose areas of work coincide with the research interests of leading scientists of the Mining University. Moreover, there is no talk of using innovative domestic developments. The only plan is to "get acquainted with existing methods and materials that do not require intellectual property protection".
The PhD students from the People's Republic of China have already attended the first lecture of the Philosophy of Science course. It was devoted to the basics of publishing and the preparation of articles based on scientific results. Further plans include familiarization with the methodology of experiments, individual work in laboratories under the guidance of an adviser from the Russian side, preparation of a review of publications by leading scientists in the world on the profile areas of research and its defense at a meeting of a joint international expert committee.
The topics of research, which are engaged in the representatives of the Chinese higher school, are quite diverse. For example, Ren Yaqiang is researching such a promising area as shallow bottom electrical prospecting to find deposits of different kinds of minerals. And Liang Shuai Shuai is involved in improving work safety in coal mines. Given that CUMT and the Mining University are strategic partners, and that the largest mining company in our country, SUEK, has a long history of cooperation with the St. Petersburg University, it makes perfect sense for young scientists from China to choose this site to test the results of their scientific research.
"Despite the increasing role of renewables - solar power and wind power - coal occupies an important place in the energy mix of many countries. Currently 35% of the world's energy is generated by coal-fired power stations, which is one of the pillars on which our entire civilisation rests. In the USA, it makes up 20 percent of the energy mix, in Japan 30 percent, in South Korea 36 percent, in China 63 percent and in India 72 percent. In Germany it has been reduced to 24% in recent years but has risen again to 31% in the first six months of 2022," says Liang Shuai, explaining the relevance of his work.
He says that some coal seams in PRC and the entire Asia-Pacific region are characterized by large volumes of water contained within the seams and high headwaters. This peculiarity has repeatedly led to accidents involving flooding, and one of the most urgent tasks facing Chinese science is therefore to find a solution that will make miners' work safer.
"I plan to continue research in this area at the St Petersburg Mining University. In particular, together with my colleagues in St Petersburg, I am going to conduct a series of laboratory experiments to determine the regularities that arise when certain factors affect the stress-strain state of coal seams. In addition, I am going to create a numerical hydrodynamic coupling model to study the laws of influence of different horizons and thicknesses modified by plugging on the stress field, displacement field and seepage field. This will allow the final determination of the best modified horizon and thickness of the tamping," said Liang Shuai Shuai.
An agreement on a one-time internship at the Mining University for postgraduate students from China was reached during a July working meeting between Rector Vladimir Litvinenko and CUMT President Song Xuefeng. According to the head of the St. Petersburg university, "it will allow young people from China to better assess Russian higher education in terms of infrastructural capacity, the quality of faculty and to understand which specific areas of joint research can be the most promising for our countries.
Increasing academic mobility is one of the most promising areas of partnership between the two mining universities. Moreover, both sides plan to increase it not only in quantity but also in quality. That is, not only to exchange undergraduate and graduate students, but also to implement a full-fledged dual degree programme that involves the unification of curricula.
In addition, CUMT is a supporting university of the International Competence Centre for Mining Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO, which is headquartered at the St. Petersburg Mining University. And as such, it is involved in the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in relation to the mining industry. In particular, together with Russian colleagues, it works to reduce the man-made load on the environment, to introduce the best available technologies in the industry, and to improve the competences of engineering personnel.
As a reminder, China University of Mining and Technology was founded in 1909. It is located in Jiangsu province in the east of China and covers an area of about 300 hectares. The CUMT has about 40,000 students and a faculty of over 3,100, with doctors of science accounting for 60% of the staff. One of the world's three most respected ranking agencies for ranking the world's best higher education institutions, ARWU, included this university in the top 500 of its global chart.