President Yang Wei attended the 12th Annual Presidents Meeting of APRU

On June 27 and 28, President Yang Wei attended the 12^th Annual Presidents Meeting of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) hosted by Keio University, Japan. Under the theme of Traditions and Innovation in Higher Education: Redefining Co-existence. Managing Change and Enhancing Opportunities, a Presidents Open Forum was organized, during which President Yang made a well-received presentation entitled Innovative International Partnerships: Eliminating Barriers & Grasping Opportunities .

At the APRU Business Meeting of June 28, President Yang was elected by the participating APRU presidents a member of the Steering Committee as one of the representatives of the Asian member universities and the representative of the 7 Chinese member universities, including Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Taiwan University.

On the evening of June 27, President Yang had a meeting with Chancellor Gene David Block and Acting Vice Provost J. Nicholas Entrikin from UCLA, USA, who were also at the 12^th APRU Presidents Meeting. President Yang and the UCLA leaders reviewed the successful collaboration that has been going on in the past years between the two institutions in the forms of joint research and faculty and student exchange, and both leaders expressed strong wishes to strengthen the existing close relationship by expanding and deepening collaboration in further developing Zhejiang California International NanoSystems Institute, constructing Joint Clinical Centers and conducting a student summer program that will enable undergraduate students from Zhejiang University to take credit courses at UCLA.

APRU is a consortium of 37 leading research universities from 15 countries in the Pacific Rim. Zhejiang University joined the consortium in 2003. In May 2007, the 11^th APRU Annual Presidents Meeting was held on Zhejiang University campus with a great success.