Newton Fund Accelerates South China collaboration with the UK in Science and Innovation

Guest blogger, Stella Wei, Newton Fund South China Lead

An initial idea of just me meeting a Newton International Exchanges recipient was upgraded to an official visit led the Consul General of the British Consulate in Guangzhou to the Newton awardee’s host university –South China University of Technology (SCUT), one of the top universities in South China. Newton has started to shine its magic impact after its second year in South China.

On 3 December, the Consul General Mr. Matthew Rous paid his first visit to SCUT, accompanied by Ms. Holly White, Counsellor Science and innovation and SIN Guangzhou team. Newton was the main theme for the meeting with Mr. Zhu Min, Vice president of SCUT. Newton has accelerated UK-China collaborations and positioned the UK as partner of choice for China in science and innovation.

Matthew appreciated SCUT’s involvement in Newton’s people exchange programmes like International Exchanges and Researcher Connect Workshop, and encouraged SCUT to explore more UK partnership through the newly launched Newton Call –Research & Innovation Bridges. Zhu commented that SCUT would like to further engage in Newton programmes given the university’s strength in technology and engineering and strong reputation of industry-university collaboration in the region. To take the SCUT’s collaboration with UK further, Zhu also wanted to put SIN Guangzhou’s proposal of building a joint research & innovation platform into the university’s strategic thirteen’s five year plan (2016-2020).

After the meeting, we were offered a tour of China’s State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices (SKLLMD) in SCUT, one of China’s best research bases in material science. The tour was guided by the Newton Awardee professor Wu Hongbin. Wu told us that Newton International Exchange has sustained his research collaboration with Prof Jenny Nelson of Imperial College London that started since 2009. He believed the tangible partnership between SKLLMD and UK’s world leading scientists will mutually strengthen both research capacities and generate high quality research outcomes. Building capacity and strengthening relationships between UK and China is one of the goals of Newton.

The pleasant visit ended up with a lot of sharing and things to follow up. The Newton Fund has shown its unique leverage to boost the UK China tangible collaboration in science and innovation in an all-round way from individual to individual, institution to institution, nation to nation.