On April 24th, Aalto-Tongji Annual President Dialogue was held at Tongji University. Pei Gang, President of Tongji University, Jiang Bo, Vice Prisident of Tongji University, Tuula Teeri, Prisident of Aalto University, Eero Eloranta and Hannu Seristö, Vice Presidents of Aalto University attended the meeting.
The annual dialogue focused on the academic and commercial cooperation between Tongji University and Aalto University.
The two sides have signed the agreement on the establishment of Shanghai International Design Innovation College. The college is aimed at growing to an international and leading design college with Chinese characteristics and a demonstration base for Sino-foreign cooperative education to promote comprehensive reform in education and teaching through international cooperation. Both universities will jointly provide educational teaching resources for the college, and actively cooperate with members of CUMULUS– international art, design and media college to decide what the teaching content should be like. Besides, they will actively apply for government’s support to provide more scholarships and research funding projects for students, teachers and researchers of the two universities.
Shanghai is vigorously promoting innovation-driven industrial restructuring. Given the issues such as international intellectual property and international technology transfer, President Pei Gang proposed to co-establish an enterprise driven by innovation and entrepreneurship, in addition to Shanghai International Design Innovation College. This can take the advantage of disciplines such as information and communication technology(ICT), creative innovation design, and international business management to further foster the industrial advantage. Enterprises are able to start the new ecological cooperation with the universities to provide students with more opportunities to study and practice, which contributes to the benefit the education of Tongji University and Aalto University. At the same time, the two sides will actively seek cooperation with other universities, such as cooperation with the University of Helsinki in law.
Since September, 2013, Tongji University has started to cooperate with Aalto University. Prof. Lou Yongqi, Dean of College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University and SFC Executive Vice Director gave a brief introduction on the cooperation during this period. Jarmo Suominen, Vice Director of Finnish-Sino Center in Finland, introduced the “Tongji Lounge”, a communication platform established in Aalto University in November, 2014. He proposed, Tongji Lounge can be developed into a platform to display the accomplishments of entrepreneurial students in Tongji University, Shanghai International Design Innovation College and China to Aalto University and Finland. In order to promote the education and research cooperation of two sides, Tuula Teeri proposed to jointly organize an international conference to discuss industrial restructuring in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship education. This conference can be held on Shanghai – Espoo or Tongji – Alto cooperative framework.
At noon, President Pei Gang and the president delegation of Aalto University and University of Helsinki had lunch together. Presidents of the three universities shared ideas on the existing cooperation between education reform and business model. A consensus was reached that the academic area should be more closely integrated into industry, and get a deeper cooperation on intellectual property law, air and water quality studies.
