Gerald Byrne, Royal Academy of Engineering, UK Fellow Conferred Honorary TJU Professorship

On October 25, 2013, Professor Gerald Byrne, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK and College Principal and Dean of Engineering at the College of Engineering and Architecture of University College Dublin, was conferred a Tianjin Univerisity (TJU) honorary professorship. President Li Jiajun conferred the Certificate of TJU Honorary Professorship onto him.

During the meeting, Professor Byrne talked about his first visit to Tianjin to attend an international conference in 1997. He was amazed at Tianjin’s rapid growth in recent years. He then gave an overview of University College Dublin. The university was established in 1851. Currently, there are 7 colleges with over 30,000 students. As Dean of Engineering, Professor Byrne has been devoted to developing cooperation with Chinese universities. Additionally, this visit to TJU is to promote joint training programs between the College of Engineering and Architecture of University College Dublin with the School of Precision Instrument and Optoelectronics Engineering and the School of Architecture of TJU. He expressed his gratitude for the great honor to be TJU’s honorary professor and offered high praise of the development and academic level of TJU’s precision instrument and optoelectronics engineering. Also, he hoped to deepen cooperation with TJU’s School of Precision Instrument and Optoelectronics Engineering to promote the development of related academic areas based on their previous cooperation.

President Li indicated that TJU encourages cooperation of all the academic faculties with world-renowned universities and colleges and is committed to faculty enhancement. In addition, he mentioned TJU’s new campus to be built in 2015, which is nearly twice the floor area of the current campus and which fosters closer cooperation with the neighboring Binhai New Area, an area of national highlight of development.