From May 19th to 20th, Michael Spence, President of the University College of London (UCL) together with other delegates visited Shanghai Jiao Tong University. They were greeted on the Shanghai Jiao Tong side by Yang Zhenbin, Secretary of the University’s Communist Party of China (CPC) Party Committee, Vice President Xu Xuemin, Dean of the School of Smart Energy Huang Zhen, and Secretary of the School of Design’s CPC Party Committee Zhang Dandan. The two sides discussed ongoing collaboration between both institutions, and renewed the previous agreement to provide seed funding for university-level cooperation . Christoph Lindner, Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, Jolene Skordis, Vice-Dean (International), Faculty of Population Health Sciences, and Ciaran Moynihan, Director of International Cooperation, accompanied the visit.
At the same time, the delegation visited the School of Design. Guo Liang, deputy director of the International Affairs Division of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Chen Ruishan and Chang Danni, vice deans of the School of Design, Wu Jian, associate professor from the Department of Architecture and Wen Xiaojing, associate professor from the Department of Design attended their reception.
The delegation first visited the new design building which had just opened the previous month. Wu Jian and Wen Xiaojing gave a short guided tour of the building. Christoph Lindner highly commended the design concept and functionality of the building. As a college administrator, he was delighted to see faculty and students now have a space of their own on campus. He expressed his high expectation that faculty and students will make full use of the space for both academic exchange and collaborative research, thus serving as a platform for the intersection of multiple disciplines and the integration of science and art, becoming a campus hall that breaks through the barriers in the way of interpersonal exchange.
After the tour, the two parties convened a meeting. Chen Ruishan introduced the School of Design starting from its conception, and enumerated the number of current faculty and students, as well as background on present academic disciplines, school-enterprise cooperation and training, and summarized existing cooperation between the two parties. Christoph Lindner introduced the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. The faculty consists of 13 Schools and institutions, including the School of Architecture, the School of Planning, the School of Construction and Project Management, the School of Environmental Energy Resources, and the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis. The institution was established in 1841 by Sir Herbert Bartlett and is the earliest architectural institution in the UK. According to the Research Excellence Framework (REF/RAE) evaluation, Bartlett was rated as the highest professional institution in the field of architectural research. This enables it to address the most significant interdisciplinary issues facing the world, including sustainable urban development, intercultural communication, human well-being and broader health challenges. Christoph Lindner said that the faculty hopes to take action on the global climate crisis by developing radical thinking on climate action through teaching and research, as well as pledging to become a net zero carbon faculty by the year 2030.
In the course of discussions, the disciplines taught in the respective schools were revealed to be highly congruous, and there was great hope to further promote student and faculty exchange, seed funding, and joint research ventures in the future.
The University College London is a comprehensive research university with a renowned international reputation. It ranked 8th in the world according to QS in 2023. It is the founding institution of the University of London Alliance, the Russell University Group and the European Research University Alliance.
Editor on Duty: Cheng Yan