On December 2, 2021, on the day of the 212th anniversary of Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University, the opening ceremony of III Betancourt International Engineering Forum was held.

The Forum’s Plenary session «Engineering Education in Industry 4.0: Trends and Prospects» was opened by the Rector of PGUPS A.Yu. Panychev. He read out the greetings of the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation V.G. Saveliev.

Presentations were made by Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Knyaginin, Head of the Department of Technical Policy of Russian Railways Vladimir Andreev, Rector of the National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia Egiazar Vardanyan, Head of St. Petersburg Metro Evgeny Kozin, Deputy CEO of RM Rail Sergey Drobzhev, Executive Director of Radar MMS Ivan Antsev.

The final presentation for the Plenary session was made by the Rector of PGUPS Alexander Panychev on the topic of the university transformation in the context of turbulence of education under Industry 4.0.

Following the tradition, Rector presented diplomas of Honorary Professor and Honorary Teacher of the University. By the decision of the Academic Council of the University, the title of Honorary Professor was awarded to the professor of the Department of History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology Igor Kiselev, and the title of Honorary Teacher was awarded to the professor of the Department of Further Mathematics Viktor Garbaruk.

At the end of the Plenary session, Agreements on cooperation were signed between the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University and the South Caucasian Railway, the Center for Advanced Technologies TMH, Radar MMS, Ultramar, and the European Sulfur Terminal. A Plan for further joint activities was signed between PGUPS and the Murmansk Commercial Seaport.