On October 13, President Pei Gang met the visiting Rector of the University of Rome La Sapienza (URS) Professor Renato Guarini and his party.

President Pei Gang welcomed Rector Guarini and Professor Barbera from School of Architecture, and he said that the cooperation between Tongji University (TU) and URS on architecture, urban planning and protection of historic building, mechanical engineering established a favorable basis, and hoped that two universities could expand cooperation domains, especially strengthen cooperation in domains of science, law, medicine and life sciences. Professor Guarini expressed that URS attached great importance to the cooperation with TU. Before this, URS conferred Academician Zheng Shiling an honorary doctor, which is first given to a Chinese scholar. He hoped that two universities would, on the basis of strengthening cooperation on scientific cooperation, further promoted exchanges of professors and students and opened the joint training program of dual degrees in some proper disciplines.

Academician Zheng Shiling, principles of international exchange and cooperation office, college of architecture and Urban Planning, Sino-Italian College attended the meeting.