A University of Warwick delegation led by Prof. Stuart Croft and Prof. Simon Swain visited Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) this week to sign several key agreements designed to further increase the depth and breadth of partnership between our institutions.

Warwick and SJTU have achieved many novel collaborations over the last five years in areas of mutual strength, including an English language training outreach programme in rural China, a series of joint research workshops in Humanities and many individual research connections. Earlier this year Warwick hosted 10 Engineering undergraduates from the University of Michigan-SJTU Joint Institute who attended a Winter School on “Sustainable Cities and Infrastructures for Emergencies”. As part of the Rutherford Strategic International Fellowship scheme, Warwick hosted five early-career academics from SJTU in 2018-19 from a wide range of disciplines, including polymer chemistry, translation studies and statistics, further expanding the connections between the two universities.

To further develop this strong foundation of collaboration, the SJTU-Warwick Joint Seed Fund has been established with the specific intention to foster new initiatives with high potential for global impact that combine complementary aspects of each institution towards novel research outcomes.

The Fund will open for applications later this year and award grants of up to £10,000 (Warwick) and RMB100,000 (SJTU) per project through a competitive selection process.

Speaking at the Joint Seed Fund launch event, hosted by SJTU and attended by representatives from a wide range of academic disciplines interested in collaborating with Warwick, Prof. Simon Swain, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (External Engagement) said;

"We regard our partnerships in China as being of the utmost importance to Warwick’s research and teaching endeavours. Our academics have long had strong and successful research and teaching links with their counterparts at SJTU. We hope that this fund will help us to continue developing world-leading, ‘win-win’ collaborations which will have global impact.”

In addition, an expansion of the institutional-level student exchange agreement between Warwick and SJTU was formalised during this visit, giving a greater range of opportunities to study abroad, as Helen Johnson, Head of Study Abroad explains;

"The expansion of our student exchange with SJTU is an exciting development which will enable more Warwick students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, to experience life at a top Chinese university and choose from a wide range of short and long-term mobility activities including part-year exchange, summer schools and research projects”

For further information about collaborating with SJTU please contact Victoria.Strudwick@warwick.ac.uk.

For media enquiries, contact Luke Walton, International Press Manager: L dot Walton dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk

23 May 2019