July 6, 2018

China ties help meet shared national challenges

Beijing Jiaotong University delegation visits UOW

UOW’s ties with Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) in China were strengthened further on 3 July with a collaboration seen as helping to meet 'shared national challenges' facing China and Australia.

The visit was organised by UOW’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences.

The delegation headed by Professor Baigen Cai, and Professor Yidong Li, Dean and Vice Dean of BJTU’s School of Computer and Information Technology, visited UOW to discuss opportunities to collaborate in research and teaching in computer vision, medical image analysis, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and software testing.

Dean of UOW’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, Professor Valerie Linton, welcomed the delegation.

“The success of international collaborations often depends on individual collaborators. Universities can only help establish a platform for collaboration which then leads to opportunities for our academics and students to exchange ideas, learn more about each other and help solve the national challenges each country is facing such as securing our futures in a carbon and resource-constrained world,” she said.

Over the past couple of years a number of UOW students have attended Summer School and Study Tours offered by BJTU, with many students writing blogs about their trips to Beijing visiting manufacturing plants, transportation projects and Chinese IT companies.

“The opportunities that BJTU provides to our students to see first-hand manufacturing and infrastructure projects on a scale they would never encounter in Australia while still studying is an awe-inspiring experience,” Professor Linton said.

BJTU is a national key university in the People’s Republic of China under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education and is jointly supported by China’s Ministry of Education, the China Railway Corporation and the Beijing Municipal Government. The university is deeply engaged in research relevant to transport infrastructure and high-speed rail and trains such as the newly developed Fuxing Hao.

Due to BJTU’s targeted research in disciplines such as information, management and transportation science and technology, over the past decade, many research collaborations have been established between UOW and BJTU academics which have led to numerous staff and research student exchanges for teaching and research.

In 2014, UOW’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences (EIS), established a twinning program with BJTU under the leadership of UOW’s Professor Weihua Li for the Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronic) with BJTU’s School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering.

The Faculty has a number of twinning programs with Chinese universities that offer a program of study where students can complete part of the program at their home institution and then transfer to UOW to complete the remainder. Twinning programs usually involve close co-operation in curriculum development and design between UOW and the partner institution.

The twinning program with BJTU recently held its first graduation ceremony in China, and a number of students from BJTU have transferred to UOW to complete the UOW degree with the first cohort due to graduate in July this year.

Other highly regarded academic departments from BJTU have recently visited UOW including Professor Xiaohui Huang and Dr Yuliya Sharkun from the School of Software Engineering in May this year in order to discuss Summer School opportunities. 

Positive collaboration during Beijing Jiaotong University delegation visit.