President GONG Ke takes an effective visit to the University of Edinburgh

On Feb.18, Prof. GONG visited theUniversityof Edinburgh, where he was welcomed bySir TimothyO’Shea, Principal of the university. Prof. O’Shea stressed that the University of Edinburgh takes international cooperation as tradition of this historic University and strategy of its further development，and Tianjin University is one of its global partners.

After the reception, the university organized a meeting for introducing the University and discussing the collaboration with Tianjin University by leaders and faculty members of the University of Edinburgh.Prof.Stephen Hillier, Vice-Principal International, firstly briefed the scope, structure and strategy of the University, in which he has emphasized the keywords of “interdisciplinarity” and “globalization”.

Then, Prof.Nigel Brown, Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering CSE mentioned that the college which consists of 7 schools covering Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Geo-Sciences, Informatics, Mathematics, and Physics & Astronomy, with a total of about 190 professors, 300 academic staff, 700 support staff and 800 research staff and 5500 undergraduates and 1000 postgraduates. The college has won a total research grant of 107 million Pounds for the last fiscal year. This college lays foundation to interdisciplinary study by means of the multi-disciplinary Centres likeEdinburgh Parallel Computer Centre(EPCC) ,National e-Science Centre(NeSC), etc. The further development plan of the college is to “have further developed our broad research base in which innovative interdisciplinary research flourishes both with the University and with other institutions” and to become a world-leading centre addressing the grand challenges of Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Global Security and Lifelong Health and Well-being.

Chaired by Prof.Robin Wallace, Dean international CSE and head of Institute for Energy Systems, a series of presentations are given by Dr.Stuart Anderson, Director of Teaching of the school of Informatics, about its under- and post-graduate programs. An attractive issue he mentioned is the Student Association which is very active in self-learning activities. Prof.Igor Goryaninfrom Joint Research Centre for System Biology talked about the research activities, especially international collaborative researches. Prof.Ian Underwood, head of Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano System, talked about their research works with emphasis on mixed structure. Some outstanding programs were given as examples to show their strength, such as the invention of the world’s smallest color TV screen and low power smart antenna, etc. Dr.Ma Hongwu, an alumnus of TU, talked about the joint PhD degree program with Chinese Universities especially with Tianjin University. Prof.David Roberson, Head of School of Informatics, the largest European Informatics institute, also attended the discussion.

During the discussion, President GONG showed strong interests in collaboration with University of Edinburgh, especially to include TU as a partner of the “Erasmus Mondus Project” for Computer Science and Technology, and to form programs to promote faculty collaboration enabling the postgraduate students exchange. He also suggested to devise summer school programs for undergraduate students, possibly in the coming summer, and to have an Edinburgh University Tour in selected Chinese universities including TU by chance of the football team visiting China later this year.