Dr. Ramón Gutiérrez Serret, head of CEDEX’s Maritime Experimentation Laboratory visited IWHR on April 21, 2015 and met IWHR President Kuang Shangfu to discuss  future cooperation between the two research institutes. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed to promote personnel exchange and research collaboration.

The Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas (CEDEX), a civil engineering research agency in Spain, was founded in 1957 and is under the administration of Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Dr. Kuang welcomed the visiting guest and pointed out CEDEX and IWHR share similarities in at least four aspects: CEDEX was founded in 1957 while IWHR in 1958; both are government affiliated research institutes; both share a lot of research fields, such as water resources and environment, river and coastal engineering, geotechnical engineering, structures and materials; and both host IAHR’s offices. He hoped that, based on an MOU, both sides could increase mutual personnel exchange, academic communication and knowledge sharing; both institutes could also jointly organize international conferences, establish regular exchange mechanism, promote cooperation between China and Spain, and contribute to the water science and technology progress of the world.

Dr. Serret said he was happy to visit and sign the MOU. During the meeting he also briefed on CEDEX’s seven experimentation centers, and said he was looking forward to substantial cooperation in fields of shared interests between both institutes.

An MOU on technological and academic cooperation was then signed to promote publication exchange, joint conference organization, cooperative research, expert exchange and training.