The2nd International Higher Education Forum was held on International Campusyesterday. More than 40 scholars from the University of Edinburgh, Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Cambridge, University ofBirmingham and University of Southampton joined the forum to share freshinsights on the innovation and opening-up in international education resources.

“Globalizationtransforms the environment where universities perform their missions,” said ZJUPresident WU Zhaohui at the forum. In his speech Prof. WU introduced ZJU’sglobal strategy and a series of actions to be taken in the spirit of thestrategy. He explained that the whole ethos of ZJU’s strategy and practices isto build an open innovation ecosystem, which features the integration of theuniversity innovation network, global engagement network, social servicenetwork 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.

“Weneed to recognize that the challenges we are talking about, whether it’s healthcare, or food, or energy, (or) security, will not be solved by simplytechnological breakthroughs, nor will they be resolved by the snap of afinger,” said Prof. Robert Jones in his keynote speech. “These problems are nothard to solve just because of the complexities they present on the technicalscale; they are hard to solve because they are problems at the human scale.”Prof. Jones highlighted the importance of scientific collaboration and creativethinking as the ways to better understand and solve the common issues of allhumanity.

Severalagreements were also signed during the forum to further explore thepossibilities of working together internationally. ZJU and UoE will establish aresearch center to promote cooperation in biomedical and health-relatedtranslational research. The ZJU-UIUC Joint Research Center will target at majormultidisciplinary challenges that impact China and the world, includingenvironmental sustainability, healthcare and intelligent infrastructure. 

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

Photo:LU Shaoqing & HE Jiawen