On the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2017, the signing ceremony of the “Tsinghua University (Department of Mechanical Engineering) – Siemens Joint Research Center for Advanced Industrial Robots” was held in Suzhou.
Lin Feng, Vice Dean of Tsinghua’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Zhu Xiaoxun, Director of the Siemens China Research Institute, signed the agreement on behalf of the two parties. Witnesses to this ceremony included Academician Wu Cheng, Director of Tsinghua’s National CIMS Engineering Technological Research Center, Ma Jun, Director of the Overseas R&D Management Office, Prof. Chen Ken from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Norbert Gaus, Siemens’ Global Vice President, Lothar Herrmann, President and CEO of Siemens in the Greater China Region, and Natascha Eckert, Siemens’ President for global university cooperation. Faculty and staff representatives from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Department of Computer Science and Technology, the Department of Automotive Engineering, and the School of Public Management, as well as from Siemens also attended the signing ceremony.
At the signing ceremony, Vice President Norbert Gaus and Vice Dean Lin Feng gave speeches on behalf of each party. Mr. Gaus pointed out that Tsinghua is one of Siemens’ closest partners in China. He added that he thought highly of the cooperation between the two parties over the years, and believed that the establishment of the new joint research center would allow both sides to exploit fully their advantages in this area, to build an influential open innovative platform for the related industry. Vice Dean Lin also pointed out that the establishment of the center marked another great milestone in the Tsinghua – Siemens cooperation, based on which the two parties will be able to further deepen their cooperation and form a true alliance between academic and industrial giants. The center will focus its research on combination of machinery and electronics, collaboration between humans and robots, and the application of artificial intelligence in robotic control. Key aims of the center are the further accumulation of technology in industrial robot control systems, the integration of international expert resources, and the cultivation of top-notch talents in related fields.
Academician Wu Cheng and Prof. Sun Maosong from the Department of Computer Sciences and Technology were also specially invited by Siemens to attend the 2017 Innovation Summit, where each gave an enlightening report. Academician Wu Cheng shared his insights with a talk on “How to construct an innovative ecological system facing ‘Made in China 2025’ and ‘Industry 4.0’ ”, which was highly appreciated by the audience. Prof. Sun Maosong’s report, entitled “Technological innovation relying on deep neural networks”, expounded the developing trend of artificial intelligence, and was illustrated using a number of cases including Go, machine translation, and poem generation.
Cooperation Background: At the end of 2007, Tsinghua University and Siemens signed a five-year overall cooperative framework agreement. Soon after, in 2008, the first “Tsinghua – Siemens Center of Knowledge Interchange”, the highest cooperative mode between Siemens and global educational institutions, and the first in the in the Asia-Pacific region, was established in Tsinghua University. The center provides a multi-disciplinary, multi-level, long-term substantial cooperative platform for the two parties, covering a range of cooperative modes, from single joint research projects to talent cultivation, technology transfer, and multiple collaboration with world-class universities, and is considered a cornerstone of the cooperation between Tsinghua and Siemens. In 2012, based on its success, the two parties renewed the cooperation agreement for a second five-year phase. Under the center’s organization, Tsinghua University and Siemens have carried out more than 200 research projects, covering the participation of more than 20 schools and departments, and have achieved a series of results of practical industrial value, becoming a model for Tsinghua’s cooperation with overseas enterprises.
[update:2017-09]
