Published on 04 April 2019
The British Council invited our Professor of Data Science, Yonghong Peng, to join Professor Linbo Qing of Sichuan University, to present to the “China Focus: Research and Innovation Partnership Workshop”, held last month in London.
Sir David Bell, University of Sunderland's Vice-Chancellor, said: “This is very prestigious recognition, given the extent to which UK universities are involved in research partnerships with Chinese universities.”
At the session in London opportunities relating to the UK-China research and innovation collaboration were shared, through speeches from British Council, UKRI, MoST China and a panel discussion.
Later in the day delegates shared their experience in developing UK-China research and innovation collaborations. The partners involved included Sichuan University, University of Sunderland, UCL Chongqing, Oxford University Innovation Suzhou, and University of Edinburgh Zhejiang University.
In their presentation Prof Qing and Prof Peng shared their development of the Joint Lab for Research and Innovation in Data Science (JLRI-DS) between the Sichuan University and the University of Sunderland.
Prof Qing summarised the achievements and progress of the JLRI-DS since it was established in 2017 in three areas:
- Research and innovation, including publications and international grants
- PhD student exchanges and co-supervision, including the success of the joint fund for PhD from British Council Newton Fund and China Scholarship Council (CSC)
- The industrial collaboration and partnership, including big data companies and hospitals, and the success of the international developing grant from the Department of Sichuan Science and Technology.
Prof Peng then presented the national industrial strategies of both countries. Exciting opportunities for the UK-China collaboration were discussed, including the potential solutions to emerge from artificial intelligence and data science relating to ageing and health, economic transformation and future cities.
Prof Peng said: “UK and China’s collaboration will offer excellent opportunities to train future global leaders of the emerging areas. The JLRI-DS of Sichuan-Sunderland partnership has been featured as ‘sharing the vision’ and ‘working for long-term ambition’ at the British Council workshop.”
Prior to the British Council Workshop, Prof Qing met the exchange PhD student Ms Jie Su, who joined the University of Sunderland in September 2018, via the Joint Lab for Research and Innovation in Data Science (JLRI-DS) of Sichuan University. Ms Jie Su, Prof Qing, and Prof Peng had a joint research meeting where they evaluated progress of Jie’s PhD project on developing new models for deep learning, and discussed the future plan. Both Prof Qing and Prof Peng are impressed by the progress of Jie and hope her continue the excellence work aiming for the world-class quality of research work.