On December 8, 2010, CAE President Zhou Ji and Vice President Gan Yong attended the signing ceremony of Doctoral Students Joint Training Agreement between University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) and four engineering research institutes, which were Central Iron & Steel Research Institute (CISRI), General Research Institute for Nonferrous Metals (GRINM), China Academy of Machinery Science & Technology (CAM) and Beijing General Research Institute of Mining & Metallurgy (BGRIMM), and delivered speeches respectively.
USTB Party Secretary Xu Jinwu, USTB President Luo Weidong, USTB Vice President Zhang Yue, GRINM President Zhang Shaoming, CAM President Li Xinya, BGRIMM Vice President Zhan Kai, together with relevant officials from the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and graduate students representatives attended the signing ceremony.
CAE President Zhou Ji pointed out in his address that in the General Assembly held earlier this year, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao expounded the significance and urgency of accelerating the transformation of the mode of economic growth, emphasized the crucial role science and technology is playing in this process and then encouraged all Members with CAE or CAS and the huge number of science and technology personnel in China to shoulder their responsibilities courageously and make their contributions to the acceleration of the transformation of the economic development pattern.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of CPC clearly mapped out the outline, keynote and route for China s development in the upcoming five years. For a period of time to come, China will still be facing strategic opportunities of great significance which could allow China to accomplish a lot.
To speed up the transformation of the mode of economic growth, science and technology is the core, talents are the roots, and education is the key. Central Committee of CPC has formulated and issued three plan outlines on science & technology, talents and education respectively one after another. In them, three strategic objective have been put forward, which are building an innovative country, making China strong by giving full play to the role of talented people, and constructing a country with abundant human resources.
In the Outline for Medium and Long Term Education Reform and Development Plan released in July 2010, new mechanism for talents training was encouraged. That is, universities should join hands with research institutes, industries and enterprises in cultivating talented people. Also talents training mode was urged to be reformed and quality of personnel training was expected to be improved.
Therefore, the practice for institutions of higher learning to make joint efforts with engineering research institutes in doctoral students training, is a specific way to implement what was advocated in the education plan outline, which will exert positive and far-reaching influence in the construction of a new mechanism featuring deeper integration between universities and research institutes, thus a win-win result.
President Zhou Ji made three points on the joint training project. The first was to raise quality and deepen reform. Zhou said that raising quality is the fundamental purpose of joint training and deepening reform is the only way through which quality can be improved. China s training scale of engineering science and technology talents has leapt to the forefront among all the countries in the world, yet the urgent problem to be solved is to raise the training quality, especially the doctoral students training quality, which is related to the important task of training top innovative talents in engineering science and technology.
Our doctoral students training is still largely the model of the planned economy, and there is a big gap between the chosen research topics of graduate students and the actual needs of the construc-tion of modernization. Therefore, reform must be deepened to improve the quality of doctoral students training.
The second point Zhou made was to be courageous to explore and be daring to innovate. Joint training is not only an important breakthrough to break the structural and institutional obstacles which are currently constraining the cultivation of top innovative talents, but also an important opportunity for universities and engineering research institutes to explore the way to establish a technological innovation system, taking enterprises as the mainstay, oriented to the market, and also featuring cooperating among enterprises, universities and research institutes.
Each institution involved in the cooperation must have the courage to explore and innovate, and constantly deepen the joint training work, keeping in mind that talents training as well as scientific and technological innovation should always enjoy priority. The third point was to be united and cooperative.
There are many practical difficulties since joint training involves collaborations among different organizations. Therefore, the practical problems should be viewed and tackled from the perspective of reform. All organizations should strengthen coordination and communication, working together to make new and greater contributions for the promotion of reform in top innovative engineering talents training, for the construction of an innovative country, and the realization of the great rejuvenation of Chinese nation.
CAE Vice President Gan Yong addressed the signing ceremony on behalf of all engineering research institutes such as Central Iron & Steel Research Institute (CISRI). In his speech, Gan reviewed the great efforts that CAE and the Ministry of Education (MOE) had made in promoting the pilot project of training doctoral students jointly by universities and research institutes.
Gan also pointed out that if institutions of higher learning characterized by talents cultivation, and engineering research institutes characterized by scientific researches, join their efforts in training doctoral students, two sides enjoy complementary advantages, and collaboration among Enterprises, Universities and Research Institutes can be enhanced, thus a win-win result can be achieved.
That is to say, joint training project can provide doctoral students in universities easy access to scientific and technological practice, which will definitely help to raise the overall quality of doctoral training in China, which, at the same time, can promote to a large extent the technological innovation in engineering research institutes.
At the signing ceremony, USTB President Luo Weidong expressed his sincere welcome to all leaders and guests attending the meeting. He also pledged to further strengthen the cooperation with the four engineering research insti-tutes in the fields of personnel training and scientific & technological innovation, and jointly endeavor to make this pilot practice a successful one.
Starting from March 2010, Ministry of Education (MOE) launched the joint training project of doctoral students by universities and engineering research institutes, which was highly recommended by CAE. As a result, eight research institutes such as Central Iron & Steel Research Institute (CISRI), and 11 universities such as University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) took part in this project. The successful signing ceremony shows that the pilot doctoral students joint training project for University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) and four engineering research institutes, such as Central Iron & Steel Research Institute (CISRI), entered a new phase featuring substantial cooperation. (By Yan Jianlin, December 2010; translated by Liu Chang)
