Shipbuilding education in Russia from Peter The Great’s training experience in Holland and England at the end of the 17th century until the present time will come under the spotlight on 15 December, when Professor Kirill V Rozhdestvenskiy DSc CEng FIMarEST delivers the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) Gordon Hodge Memorial Lecture.
The early evening Lecture will be held at the Institute’s headquarters and will be followed by the IMarEST Christmas Party in support of the IMarEST Guild of Benevolence, and the launch of their Titanic Centenary Appeal, at the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers, next door to the Institute’s offices in Coleman Street in the heart of the City of London.
“The Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute (LSI), now Saint Petersburg State Marine Technical University (SMTU), has made a large contribution, delivering highly qualified engineers and managers for the Russian shipbuilding industry for more than 80 years,” explains Professor Rozhdestvenskiy. “As well as tracing developments since the time of Peter The Great, our ‘Tsar Carpenter’, onwards, I will be describing the characteristics of the academic process at SMTU and its strong connections with the shipbuilding industry.”
The biennial IMarEST Gordon Hodge Memorial Lecture is aimed at discussing and focussing attention on how to attract young people to a career in engineering in general and marine engineering in particular.
“It is essential that we make engineering attractive to young people – everything in society has a debt to engineering; and marine engineering underpins world trade, world security, and enables economic and sustainable development of the sea,” says Professor Chris Hodge FREng, CEng, FIMarEST, Chief Electrical Engineer of BMT Defence Services, IMarEST’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and son of the late Gordon Hodge after whom the series of lectures is named. “I know my father would have been fascinated by Professor Rozhdestvenskiy’s lecture and by the impressive 80-year track record of the Saint Petersburg State Marine Technical University., which has helped lead generations of young men and women into the shipbuilding industry.”
Professor Rozhdestvenskiy graduated from Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute (LSI) now SMTU in 1969 as an engineer in hydroaerodynamics. He obtained his PhD in 1972 and DSc in 1982 from LSI with dissertations on advanced marine vehicles with dynamic support. A full professor from 1984, he was awarded the IMarEST Denny Gold Medal in 1998 for the best paper presented by branches in 1996-7. He has been a Fellow of the Institute since 1999.
He was Dean of the Faculty of Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering of the LSI-SMTU 1984-1994; Chairman of the Department of Mathematical Modelling from 1984 until the present; and is Vice Rector for International Science and Education – a role he took on in 1999. Professor Rozhdestvenskiy is a Member of Scientific Councils and International Conference Committees and in 2000 was awarded the title of Honoured Scientist of the Russian Federation by decree of the President of the Russian Federation. He has written more than a hundred publications, including three books.
There is no charge for attending the lecture, but registration in advance is recommended via events@imarest.orgor +44 (0)20 7382 2600.