President GONG Ke Visited the University of Cambridge

From Feb. 9 to Feb. 12, Prof. GONG Ke visited the University of Cambridge, where he visited the Department of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and Bio-technology, as well as Trinity College. He also met Mrs Anne Lonsdale, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Deputy High Stewars, and Ms. Tao-Tao Chang, Director of International Office, followed by a meeting with the Chinese students at Cambridge.

Department of Chemical Engineering and Bio-technology was combined by Department of Chemical Engineering and Center of Bio-technology two years ago. Prof. Nigel Slater, Director for Research introduced the research works of the department to Prof. GONG and guided him to tour the relative labs, including Cambridge Unit for Bioscience Engineering (CUBE) and Lab for Combustion, Optical Analysis, etc. Then, GONG discussed with Dr. Adrian Fisher and Dr. John Dennis on the postgraduate courses especially the program of Master of Engineering (MEng.), with Dr. David Scott (director of teaching) and Dr. Patrick Barrie (Undergraduate Admission Officer) on the undergraduate program, so-called “Tripos” in Cambridge, with emphasis on the international contents as well as exchange program with MIT.

Department of Engineering is the largest department at the university with about 140 faculty members covering civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, material and the newest one – engineering for life science. Students at this department have to pass compulsory courses in the first 2 years, no elective at all, which cover the fundamental for “all” engineering section and doing routinely projects, said by Professor Richard Prager, Director of Undergraduate Teaching. To compromise the broad fundamental and professional knowledge as well skills, fast delivery speed is necessary, which is a distinguished character of Cambridge teaching. Prof. Prager talked about the structure of teaching organization and the quality insurance system including student’s assessment in detail. He stressed, for quality teaching, although training and supervision were important, the most important was culture. Prof. Prager has also shown some interesting examples of students projects, like robots, eco-cars, running in Australia, eco-building in Africa as well a setup launched into space.

During his stay at Cambridge, Prof. GONG also visited the newly established lab of “Engineering for life science”, guided by Dr. Oyen. Besides, he discussed with signal processing group headed by Prof. Nich Kingsbury.

In the meeting with Chinese students, GONG introduced to them the recent developments in Tianjin and the programs of inviting oversee scholars back to China.