Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Australia’s prestigious University of New South Wales have renewed their joint PhD program to further collaboration in research and education.
Signed by SJTU President Ding Kuiling and UNSW Vice-Chancellor Attila Brungs on May 17th, 2023, the renewal of the joint PhD program reaffirms the universities’ commitment to a research alliance that has been in effect since 2013. Both leaders highlighted the importance of this partnership, with President Ding emphasizing the quality of research produced by the SJTU-UNSW joint seed fund program and Vice-Chancellor Brungs observing that joint SJTU-UNSW research publications have doubled in the past six to seven years.
The pact, renewable every five years, shores up joint research and innovation in multiple strategic interest areas such as smart energy, advanced materials, green economy, and water resources management. It continues the trend of increasing cooperation between SJTU and UNSW, beginning with SJTU’s accession to UNSW’s Easy Access IP network in 2014 and intensifying with the establishment of an UNSW-SJTU Joint Innovation Hub in 2015.
Since 2014, the student mobility program between SJTU and UNSW has been the largest partnership of its kind for both institutions. Prior to the pandemic, the agreement allowed for a combined total of eighty reciprocal exchange places for students from the two universities. Both President Ding and Vice-Chancellor Brungs expressed great enthusiasm and optimism for the resumption of the mobility program, going as far as to contemplating the expansion the program to include exchanges at the postgraduate level.
Following the signing ceremony at SJTU, the UNSW delegation was taken on a tour of the university’s Minhang campus, paying special visits to the Michigan-SJTU Joint Institute and SJTU’s Student Innovation Centre, further underscoring the Chinese and Australian universities’ burgeoning interest in coupling scientific research with technological innovation.