At the Odesa National Polytechnic University Academic Council solemn meeting the title of Doctor Honoris Causa has been awarded to the Professor of Ghent University (UGent Belgium) Frank Vitloks. Frank Vitloks has a doctorate in urban planning, he is employed at the Department of Geography, meanwhile being the Director of UGent Doctoral school for the natural sciences. He repeatedly visited with lecture cycles at Tartu (Estonia) and Nanjing and Chongqing (China), Helsingborg (Sweden) universities, the Gran Sasso Institute (GSSI, Aquila, Italy). He also is leading a researchers group on socio-economic geography, that conducted cross-border mobility studies for the European Commission, Belgium and Netherlands governments, also concerned with urban logistics, globalization and urbanization around the world problems. Dr. F. Vitloks has 214 publications on these topics in WoS, (h-index 37, 4592 citations); 996 publications in GS (h-index 60, 11702 citations), was research director & supervisor of 22 successfully defended doctoral researches he is a regular reviewer of national science foundations and accreditation bureaus in 23 countries.
Thanks to his efforts, over the past eight years, a close cooperation has been established between Odesa National Polytechnic University and Ghent University, holding 123rd place in the world ranking of THE-2020 universities and 138 in the QS-2019 ranking and is one of the most famous Belgian universities in the world:
- There exists an agreement on cooperation between two universities;
- UGent professors regularly conduct lecture cycles for students of Odesa National Polytechnic University Automobile Industry and Road Building College;
- Our University delegation visited UGent carrying out a presentation of our university scientific and technical developments;
- Our cooperation agreement provides for free tuition of Odesa National Polytechnic University students at UGent with a scholarship of 325 euros per month.