SCIENCE AND EDUCATION
bp enhancing local universities’ research capabilities
Baku, June 12, AZERTAC
bp today announced the successful completion of its educational project aimed to help unleash the scientific research potential of Azerbaijan’s State University of Economics (UNEC).
The project included several elements - all focused on setting up the university’s professors, researchers, doctor’s and master’s degree students for success in their academic activities through partnerships with the world’s leading scientific centres.
In his remarks to the forum held at UNEC today to celebrate the success of the project, Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, bp’s vice president for the Caspian region, communications, and external affairs, said: “We designed this project as an extension of our support to UNEC to help them position themselves as a trusted academic partner of international research centres and universities. We hope the project will open the way for the university to join international academic initiatives and as a source of reliable expertise to collaborate with the world’s leading scientific institutions.
“Earlier, we presented three laboratories to this university in support of its efforts to develop strong research potential. We were honoured to name one of those laboratories - the Food Chemistry laboratory, after Aziz Sancar, world- famous Turkish molecular biologist, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, who personally visited the university in 2021 and inaugurated the bp-presented facility. We hope our projects are a significant contribution to raising the quality of education and enhancing the research capacity of UNEC”.
As part of the project bp presented a fully automatic Drawell DTR8000 Raman spectrometer to UNEC`s Composite Materials Scientific Research Centre. The device supports research activities in such areas as nanoparticles and new materials, bioscience, materials science, medical analysis, agriculture and food technologies, analysis of water pollution, environmental sciences and other top-level subject fields.
The company supported five UNEC scientists’ collaboration with Nello Carrara - the Institute of Applied Physics in Florence, and the University of Verona through financing their trips for research and academic studies. As a result of this collaboration, five high quality research papers were produced and presented to international scientific databases such as WoS (Web of Science) and Scopus for publication.
It helped UNEC build an extensive partnership with Türkiye`s Sakarya University and jointly host three conferences which were attended by representatives of over 50 universities from 19 countries. The events covered such fields as chemical sciences and technologies, humic acids, and inventions in the field of natural sciences and engineering.
The project duration was 13 months (January 2022 - February 2023) and it was implemented by UNEC.
The total value of the project is 170,000 AZN ($100,000) which includes the costs of the research equipment, UNEC scientists’ research trips and the three joint conferences.