The University of Tokyo: The Fifth UTokyo-Tsinghua Strategic Partnership Joint Symposium Held

The 5th Joint Symposium between the University of Tokyo and Tsinghua University (China) was held over around a 6-week period from November 11, 2020 continuing the series of Tsinghua–UTokyo Joint Symposiums that started back in 2016.
Tsinghua University and the University of Tokyo signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2018. All the events of this symposium were held online because of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The wrap-up session for this year’s symposium was held on December 25, summarizing the strategic partnership activities between the two universities in 2020. Prof. Satoshi Watanabe started the session with an opening remark to introduce the cooperative activities to date. Subsequently in their respective speeches, the keynote speakers, Bin Yang (vice president and provost of Tsinghua University) and Naoto Sekimura (vice president of the University of Tokyo), introduced education and global collaboration in the time of novel coronavirus at each university. In their speeches, both vice presidents expressed their hopes that the collaboration between the two universities would contribute to solving issues on an international scale.

Then, faculty members from both universities gave reports on the following nine online workshops and seminars that had taken place during the previous six weeks. These online events had facilitated multidisciplinary academic exchanges through lively discussions.

1. Health Biotechnology and Engineering
2. Automotive Engineering
3. Humanities
4. Tsinghua-Seoul National Univ-UTokyo Student Exchange in Materials Engineering
5. Materials and devices
6. Collaborative education
7. Applied Physics
8. Physics & Materials
9. Innovative thinking and teamwork

Finally, the outline of the student event scheduled for next March was introduced. It is hoped that this event will continue to provide students with an opportunity for cross-cultural experience at various levels.