News

Tsinghua: Building a global network

By Song Ping and Zhang Zhao (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-26 07:58

Executives of foreign companies visited an exhibition of Tsinghua University's scientific and technological achievements on April 24. Photos Provided to China Daily

A ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of Tsinghua University was held on April 24 in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

In addition to university leaders, well known scholars and government officials, executives from globally renowned enterprises including Toyota, UTC, General Motors, MHI, Siemens, Veolia, Boeing, Toshiba, Intel, P&G, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, Microsoft, BP and SK attended the ceremony and an evening reception the night before.

International R&D cooperation is "one of Tsinghua's most important tasks", said university Vice-President Kang Kejun in a keynote speech at the reception.

"Tsinghua wants to have many high-level, cutting-edge partnerships and exchange programs with the world's leading universities, research institutes and multinational companies," said Kang. "By doing this, we can improve the research capacity of our university and broaden the horizons of our students."

"With principles of mutual benefits and profit sharing, we value international cooperation on technologies as an important strategic tool. And we have already achieved some fruitful results," he added.

Tsinghua began its modern participation in international academic exchanges in the late 1970s. In the early years, it was just exchange of information when it sent its scholars to study abroad and take part in international academic conferences.

Partnerships in technology research started in early 1990s, but at the beginning, it was only small scale projects such as calculation work, software design and testing.

In 1999, Tsinghua marked a milestone when it signed 130 international contracts with a combined value of 100 million yuan ($12.1 million at the time).

The international technology cooperation fund at Tsinghua grew at an average rate of 18.6 percent over the last decade to hit 284 million yuan last year.

Tsinghua has now established research partnerships with more than 50 renowned universities including Yale, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Imperial College, Technical University of Munich and the University of Tokyo.

It also has close ties with leading enterprises, such as Toyota, MHI, UTC, Boeing, General Motors, Siemens, P&G, Veolia, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and BP.

Its global cooperation network provides exchanges with leading scholars, engineers and businesspeople from around the world on many subjects including energy, the environment, materials and life sciences.

(China Daily 04/26/2011 page5)