The President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Prof Bai Chunli, visited HKUST on November 18, 2014, and held a meeting with the Academicians on campus. HKUST President Prof Tony F Chan, Executive Vice-President and Provost Prof Wei Shyy, Vice Presidents Dr Eden Woon and Prof Joseph Hun-wei Lee, as well as HKUST’s CAS Academicians were among the audience in the meeting.　This is the first time for the CAS to hold an Academician meeting at HKUST; senior members from HKUST, other local universities, and the Hong Kong government were invited as well.

In his keynote speech, Prof Bai introduced to the audience the latest developments in CAS and the Academy’s new “Pioneer Initiative”, which was targeted to bring improvements in five different fields. The CAS would push forward category reforms, define its positioning, and implement structural changes so that the institution would better fit China’s development needs and deliver incremental results; scientific research interests would be realigned with China’s strategic needs and put emphasis on creating state-of-the-art technologies and innovation; reforms on personnel policies would be deepened in order to develop and attract top tier talent; new think tanks would be formed to foster high level science and technology development, and improving the CAS’s infrastructure and supporting capability would be implemented to ensure that the above reforms would be carried out smoothly.

HKUST President Prof Tony F Chan expects further collaboration with the CAS in the future. “I see plenty of room for future collaboration between both institutions in basic sciences, in particular, physics, mathematics and chemistry. We can also look into the possibility of forming different joint-research and innovation centers to foster academic exchange.”