During her trip to Cairo at the end of February 2023, the Vice Rector for Diversity and Internationalization, Professor Silke Wieprecht, confirmed continuing cooperation with Ain Shams University (ASU). She took the Memorandum of Understanding to Cairo, signed by Rector Wolfram Ressel, which was also signed by Ain Shams University during the visit. "By updating the university agreement, we are honoring our long-standing collaboration with Ain Shams University (ASU) in Cairo and the jointly sponsored Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design (IUSD) double master's degree," says Vice Rector Wieprecht.
The Memorandum of Understanding also provides the framework for funding, which has once more been successfully obtained under the DAAD's Program for Development-related Postgraduate Studies (EPOS), and a newly launched cooperation project under the DAAD's SDG Partnerships Program. In addition, both universities also intend to cooperate more closely at the doctoral level in the future.
A visit to the German University in Cairo
Another stop on the Cairo trip was a visit to the German University in Cairo (GUC). During the visit, Vice Rector Wieprecht met with the university’s president Prof. Yasser G. Hegazy and two GUC deans Prof. Ehab Mohamed, Dean of the Faculty of Management Technology; and Prof. Moustafa Baraka, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & Materials Science, to agree further student and lecturer exchanges, and to strengthen joint research activities. During her meeting with Prof. Ashraf Mansour, the founder of the GUC, Vice Rector Wieprecht agreed that the next step will be to initiate subject-specific exchange workshops to intensify communication between researchers.
The GUC is one of the University of Stuttgart's most important partners in the Arab world. Together with the universities of Ulm and Tübingen, the University of Stuttgart has contributed significantly to the establishment and development of the GUC. In the faculties of the GUC, honorary founding deans and cooperation partners from the sponsor universities are also involved on the German side. The university's cooperation with the GUC includes activities across all levels of the University of Stuttgart: From student exchanges at Bachelor's and Master's level, to the recruitment and education of excellent Master students, to jointly supervised PhDs and binational research projects. In particular, the research projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) contribute to the internationalization of research and promotion of international mobility of scientists at the University of Stuttgart.