The 2nd International Higher Education Forum was held on International Campus yesterday. More than 40 scholars from the University of Edinburgh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Cambridge, University of Birmingham and University of Southampton joined the forum to share fresh insights on the innovation and opening-up in international education resources.

“Globalization transforms the environment where universities perform their missions,” said ZJU President WU Zhaohui at the forum. In his speech Prof. WU introduced ZJU’s global strategy and a series of actions to be taken in the spirit of the strategy. He explained that the whole ethos of ZJU’s strategy and practices is to build an open innovation ecosystem, which features the integration of the university innovation network, global engagement network, social service network and alumni network.

Prof. Peter Mathieson, principal of the University of Edinburgh (UoE) and Prof. Robert Jones, chancellor of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) also share the practices of their universities.

“We need to recognize that the challenges we are talking about, whether it’s health care, or food, or energy, (or) security, will not be solved by simply technological breakthroughs, nor will they be resolved by the snap of a finger,” said Prof. Robert Jones in his keynote speech. “These problems are not hard to solve just because of the complexities they present on the technical scale; they are hard to solve because they are problems at the human scale.” Prof. Jones highlighted the importance of scientific collaboration and creative thinking as the ways to better understand and solve the common issues of all humanity.

Several agreements were also signed during the forum to further explore the possibilities of working together internationally. ZJU and UoE will establish a research center to promote cooperation in biomedical and health-related translational research. The ZJU-UIUC Joint Research Center will target at major multidisciplinary challenges that impact China and the world, including environmental sustainability, healthcare and intelligent infrastructure. 

In addition, the ZJE Building and the ZJUI Building were inaugurated on the International Campus earlier in the morning.

Photo: LU Shaoqing & HE Jiawen