The Third Session of the Second Governing Board of International Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology ("IKCEST") was held on September 15, 2020 in Shanghai through a combination of online and offline methods. It was co-chaired by CAE Member Chen Zuoning, Chairman of the Second Governing Board of IKCEST, Vice President of CAE and Philippe Pypaert, Programme Specialist for Natural Sciences, UNESCO Beijing Office and attended by CAE Member Zhong Zhihua (Director of IKCEST), Vice President of CAE, CAE Member Pan Yunhe, CAE Member Gao Wen, CAE Member Wu Zhiqiang, Qin Changwei, Secretary-General of the National Commission of the People's Republic of China for UNESCO, and other Governing Board members made up of academicians and experts from America, Germany, India and South Africa, 3 staff from the Secretariat, and 3 representatives from the expert team.

The meeting mainly comprised three parts. Firstly, CAE Member Chen Zuoning gave a brief introduction to the participants, the minutes of third session of the Advisory Committee and the agenda. Secondly, the Governing Board reviewed the minutes of the Second Session of the Second Governing Board in 2019, IKCEST’s Work Report 2020, IKCEST Mid-term Strategic Plan (2021-2026) and IKCEST Biennial Work Plan (2021-2022). Thirdly, the participants had exchanges and discussion.

The Secretariat gave a presentation on IKCEST’s Work Report 2020, introducing IKCEST’s main work in platform construction, international academic cooperation, capacity building of developing countries, international exchanges and cooperation in 2020, as well as the main contents of IKCEST Mid-term Strategic Plan (2021-2026) and IKCEST Biennial Plan (2021-2022). After deliberation, the Governing Board approved these documents. As for IKCEST’s work in the future, the Governing Board members proposed several ideas, including strengthening cooperation with UNESCO, its member states and field offices, as well as relevant scientific research institutions, colleges and universities, promoting knowledge building and sharing with partners and organizing more conferences and training programmes to support the capacity building of engineering science and technology professionals worldwide.

During the exchange and discussion, the focus was on how IKCEST will transform its work methods in the post-pandemic era to improve service effects, and how it will strengthen its support for the two priorities, namely Africa and Gender equality. The Governing Board members put forward a number of  suggestions, such as continuing to use machine translation, making good use of university resources and existing foreign language resources to support more languages and serve more users worldwide, building a global epidemic information management platform to promote the exchange and communication of epidemic information, setting up a column of “female engineers and scholars”, etc.

Finally, the Governing Board members congratulated IKCEST on its achievements and thanked the Secretariat and expert team for their efforts in the past year. Director Zhong Zhihua expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the Governing Board members and hoped that they continue to pay attention to IKCEST’s future development and support its relevant work.