On September 18, the USP’s dean, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior, received a visit from the consul general of China in São Paulo, Yu Peng. The meeting, which took place in the Dean’s Office building, was also attended by the vice-consul, Han Lujie, and the vice-chief of the bilateral relations section, Zhuang Su.
On the agenda of the meeting was the USP-China Center, whose creation was approved by the University Council in May this year. The agency, which is directly related to the Dean’s Office, aims to centralize collaborative actions between the University and different Chinese institutions and is the result of the first visit by a USP dean to China, which took place in November 2023. This trip represented an important milestone in academic relations between the two countries, which will celebrate 50 years of diplomatic collaboration in 2024.
Based on previous collaborative experiences and discussions with Chinese partners during the USP delegation’s visit to Beijing and Shanghai, four thematic axes were defined for the center’s activities: Agricultural sciences; Geosciences and the environment; Health sciences; and Languages, cinema, design, and architecture. The themes of sustainability, big data, and artificial intelligence will cut across all the axes, basing joint activities on coordinated actions involving transdisciplinary teams from different USP units and Chinese institutions.
The center, which is housed in the Center for International Diffusion (CDI) building on the USP campus in São Paulo, is coordinated by Ricardo Trindade, a professor at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, and has Thais Vieira as its vice-coordinator, the director of Luiz de Queiroz Higher Education School of Agriculture (Esalq), who also attended the meeting with the consul general.
Trindade fez uma apresentação sobre os objetivos do projeto e mencionou que, hoje, a USP mantém 38 acordos e convênios acadêmicos vigentes com instituições da China. Outro tema demandado pelo coordenador foi o apoio do Consulado para a promoção de seminários e atividades culturais conjuntas, uma das vertentes de trabalho do novo centro.
Trindade gave a presentation on the project’s goals and mentioned that USP currently has 38 academic agreements and covenants in place with institutions in China. Another issue raised by the coordinator was the Consulate’s support for promoting seminars and joint cultural activities, one of the work areas of the new center.
The consul general highlighted the importance that China has given to education and science, mentioning the investments made in both areas over the years, and expressed the Consulate’s willingness to strengthen cooperation with USP.
Carlotti, for his part, spoke about his trip to China and how impressed he was with the country’s universities: “This was one of the reasons for creating the USP-China Center so that it can become an academic and scientific hub in connection with Chinese institutions,” he said.
