On March 25, 2019, Mr. Mathias Bernard, the President of Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA), led a delegation to visit the School of Resource and Environmental Sciences. The delegation members included Mr. François Paquis, the Secretary General, Ms. Anne Garrait-Bourrier, the Vice-President (International Relations), Ms. Françoise Peyrard, the Vice-President (Academic), Mr. Gilles Mailhot, the I-SITE CAP2025 Project Manager, Ms. Stéphanie Lamaison, the Director of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Alexandre Guitton, the Dean of Computer Science, Ms. JianJin Li, the Program Coordinator. In addition, Mr. Yann Moreau, the Commissioner of French Consulate, and Ms. Li Shanshan, the Assistant of French Consulate, also attended the meeting. Pro. Qingyun Du, the Dean of SRES, Huanfeng Shen, the Vice Dean of SRES, Pro. Jianhua He, Pro. Hui Zhang, Pro. Feng Wu, Pro. Jinjun Li, Associate Pro. Teng Fei, Associate Pro. Yan Yang, and Ms. Yuyi Jin, the International Affairs Coordinator attended the meeting.

    At the beginning of the meeting, Ms. Anne Garrait-Bourrier gave a brief introduction about UCA, which is a famous comprehensive national university located in the city of Clermont-Ferrande at the central of France. As one of France's top 20 universities, UCA owned 20 schools covering five research fields (arts, humanities, economics, management and health), 165 educational programs and 36 experimental centres. This visit is aimed to actively expand the cooperation between UCA and SRES. Mr. Gilles Mailhot, the I-SITE CAP20-25 Project Manager, then introduced the I-SITE CAP20-25 Project, which was initiated by the French government in 2017 to support 15 French universities to become world-class universities. As one of the selected universities, UCA proposed the CAP20-25 plan, which tried to improve its scientific research strength, education level and international influence in next five years. At present, the project has selected Wuhan University as the partner in China, and plans to conduct in-depth cooperation on talent training, summer schools, joint laboratories, and professors exchange visits.

    After that, Pro. Huanfeng Shen, introduced SRES from the school’s development, education, research, subject ranking, publication and international cooperation. He showed SRES’s expectation to broaden cooperation with UCA in multi-level aspects.

    Then the professors of SRES and the delegation of UCA discussed about the future cooperation. Pro. Qingyun Du expressed the welcome to the delegation and SRES have cooperated with UCA for many years in the field of environmental research. The I-SITE CAP 20-25 program of UCA is consistent with WHU's Double First Class University Plan.

    Finally, SRES and UCA reached an agreement regarding the students and faculty exchange, laboratories co-construction and future cooperation.