Professor Janusz Szmyd among masters of internationalisation

The award is presented within the framework of the Study in Poland programme carried out jointly by the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (CRASP) and the Perspektywy educational foundation. The jury panel, led by the CRASP President, Professor Arkadiusz Mężyk, awarded distinctions in seven categories (Distinguished Star, Management Star, Research Star, Teaching Star, Public Diplomacy Star, Marketing Star, Rising Star).

Professor Janusz Szmyd graduated from the AGH UST in 1977. He obtained his doctoral degree in 1980 and received his postdoctoral qualifications in 1992. He became an AGH UST Associate Professor in 1995. The title of Full Professor of Technical Sciences was awarded to him in 2002 by the President of the Republic of Poland. He is a specialist in mathematical modelling of heat and mass transfer processes. Currently, he works at the AGH UST Faculty of Energy and Fuels.

He has carried out numerous research grants and authored more than 270 articles. He was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Shibaura Institute of Technology (Tokyo). Since 2018, he has been the president of the EUROTHERM Committee, vice-president of the Commission on Threats to Civilization of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU), a member of the Committee of Thermodynamics and Combustion of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), and the Assembly of World Conferences on Experimental Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics, and Thermodynamics. At the AGH UST, he is currently a Rector’s Proxy for Cooperation with Japan and the director of third-cycle studies. Between 2006 and 2020, he was the head of the Department of Fundamental Research in Energy Engineering. He was a supervisor of six bilateral doctoral dissertations, three postdoctoral qualification candidates, and 14 doctors. He developed the study programme of an international course on Energy and Environmental Engineering (organised jointly by the AGH UST and the Shibaura Institute of Technology).

Professor Janusz Szmyd, based on his own network of contacts and collaborations established already in the 1980s with Japanese universities, has put together a remarkable list of study programmes carried out jointly by the AGH UST and top higher education institutions in Japan. Such programmes include: Polish-Japanese energy engineering winter school in Krakow and energy engineering summer school in Tokyo (organised since 2014 in cooperation with the Shibaura Institute of Technology – SIT), an agreement on carrying out bilateral doctoral studies (since 2010 in cooperation with SIT), and most recently, the International Virtual Exchange programme at the AGH UST (an intense international programme of study developed and implemented together with SIT), as well as the study programme of the international course on Energy and Environmental Engineering in the formula of second-cycle double diploma (the agreement was signed in June 2021). As a result of Professor Szmyd’s actions, the AGH UST has also concluded research and education contracts with other Japanese universities (for example, Kyoto University, The University of Tokyo, or Kyushu University).