The 5thinternational interdisciplinary forum held in Wuhan University aims to build a platform to spark ideas and academic exchange that engages domestic and overseas young scholars, to promote interdisciplinary and academic innovation, and to collaborate with the world's first-class universities in terms of the construction of first-class disciplines. At present, the forum has successfully held four sessions and invited nearly 1000 outstanding young scholars from more than 30 countries and regions around the world, making it an important exchanging opportunity for Wuhan University.
Opening of the forum
This year’s forum continues its way to strengthen the interactive dialogue of talents, with additional venues which are especially-provided overseas to achieve full coverage at home and abroad.
Hostess, Ms. Feng
At 8:30 in the morning, the opening ceremony was officially started in the Lecture Hall of the Main Library, with nearly 300 people gathering at the scene. The beginning of it was announced by the hostess, Ms. Feng, who introduced the guests including school leaders, college delegates and overseas representatives.
President Dou Xiankang
Next, the first part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by the chairman of the forum, Mr. Dou Xiankang, the president of Wuhan University. He introduced his outlook on talents training in Wuhan University from three perspectives: returning, dreams and career building. For the first point, he said that the present outstanding young people was facing the dilemma of whether or not to return home. After all, developed countries such as the United States could offer tempting conditions, but he mentioned in particular that now Wuhan University will also provide more attractive welfare security and wages to draw the ambitious, since the strength of youth represents the university’ s developing potential. For the second point, he emphasized that in today's era, talents have ushered in the best times, while talent competition directly determines the quality of a school and the future dreams of a country. Our government attaches great importance to the training of the talents by enhancing rapid development of the economy and the continuous optimization of the environment. Finally, he quoted some words of the headmaster of Peking University, "the height of talents determines the height of universities." With the repeated emphasis on talents to the reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily, Mr. Dou once again highlighted the high attention he paid to talents and their career buildings.
The second part was the speech by two outstanding young representatives. The hostess invited Shen Xiao, an outstanding senior research fellow at Wuhan University, and Fu Lei, an honorable graduate of the class of 1997 in the Chemistry School of Wuhan University.
Representative Shen Xiao
Shen Xiao specifically mentioned the reasons for his return to China. One was that his parents did not understand English and preferred Chinese culture. Second was the policy support. As for his choice of Wuhan University, there were also reasons such as the housing price in Wuhan, the prospects for development and the beautiful scenery on campus.
Representative Fu Lei
Fu Lei told a story to demonstrate how he was impressed by President Dou's attention to talents. At the award ceremony of "the Challenge Cup" in which he had participated, President Dou and him were both at the report hall. At that time when he brought forward his team's requirements for scientific research such as the area of housing, he thought that he could only get half of his requests. "I did not expect President Dou to accept and provide all my requirements," he said. And after that, President Dou indeed provided his team with very favorable conditions.
Minister of personnel of WHU, Zhu Deyou
The last part was a speech by the minister of personnel of Wuhan University Mr. Zhu Deyou. He emphasized the resource support and protection of talents coming from Wuhan University. Two choices were also put forward during his speech, one was about the choice of talents, that is, the attitude of Wuhan University in terms of talent attraction, which is being open minded towards global recruitment; the other was the platform for talents, which aimed to help the talents conduct practice and entrepreneurial projects. He said that Wuhan has always had the title of "Chicago of the East", which emphasizes that Wuhan University would not only witness different seasons, but also actively seek change in internal resources and conditions.
Young scholars in attendance
The end of the ceremony was also announced by the hostess, who mentioned that someone compared President Dou Xiankang to Liu Daoyu, which shows his great contributions toward university management and the way of behaving. The opening ceremony successfully concluded with the applause of the guests.
(Photo by Yang Ziqing)
(Edited by Xu Yumeng, Wang Wei, Edmund Wai Man Lai, Liu Jiachen and Liu Xiaoli)
