Summer sessions bring together Chinese and Swedish students
Almost 80 students and teachers from China and Sweden met at KTH in late August for a week of inspirational lectures on a broad range of interdisciplinary topics in biomedicine. The joint Swedish/Chinese summer school and workshop is held to motivate students to enrol in exchange programs and to embark on innovative biomedical research.
What started as a small exchange project initiated four years ago by Ramon Wyss, Vice President of international affairs and Professor in Theoretical Nuclear Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has now grown into a key strategic partnership between KTH and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in China. This year, lectures were held on more than 40 different biomedical research subjects during an intense week of study in Stockholm.
Weihai Ying, Vice Dean of the SJTU School of Biomedical Engineering and a Professor at SJTU, has been working on developing the summer school activities.
“We have a really great and close relationship with KTH, and have now signed an agreement for a double masters program, a double PhD program and an exchange student program,” he says. “The number of participants in our summer school activities has increased dramatically, and during this week, I have spoken to at least five students from SJTU who were very interested in studying at KTH.”
Jerker Widengren, a Professor at KTH who is responsible for the organisation of the workshop/summer school, says the collaboration has evolved under the umbrella of the KTH Life science technology research platform, the purpose of which is to promote KTH’s research in the field, external collaborations, and to brand KTH as an important national and international player in life science research.
“We want to give students a broad view of the research that is going on in this field, the results we have so far and future perspectives,” Widengren says. “Life science technology research at KTH has a broad span. Based on engineering competence applied to health and biomedicine, it includes many disciplines, such as biotechnology, biomedical engineering, biophysics, assistant technology for home care and advanced molecular simulations, to name a few.”
SJTU has also established a KTH-SJTU joint education and research centre as well as a joint Swedish Culture Centre in Shanghai. The joint research centre has conducted research in fields such as neurorehabilitation.
“We have a lot of activities in the education and research centre – everything from innovation symposiums to Swedish cultural events such as showing Swedish films,” Ying says. “ We also have a close cooperation with several Swedish companies in China, such as SKF, Volvo and Ericsson. They support us through sponsorships and by sending us guest speakers.
Ying highlights the fact that Sweden is among the most innovative countries in the world, something he thinks is very appealing to Chinese students: “That is really something we can learn from – how a small country like Sweden can rank among the top five economies in the Global Innovation Index.
“My personal reflection is that Swedes are very open-minded, and that they allow people to make mistakes and learn from them. Also the fact that in Sweden, intellectual property rights are held by the professors is an important incentive that we lack in China.”
Widengren points out that there is a great opportunity for clinical research in China as SJTU has access to 20,000 hospital beds through its university hospitals.
“That is very beneficial for our research since we are facing many challenges – for example, with the treatment of cancer and Alzheimer’s decease. Our cooperation has already resulted in several joint research projects with STJU, for example about stroke.
The summer school is also about getting to know other students and a new culture. One way of doing that is to meet in more casual forums.
“We always have a table tennis tournament during the summer school, which is very popular,” Widengren says. “Through such activities, we make good friends, both with faculty members and students.
Frida Kalm is a PhD student at KTH, specialising in medical technology: a brand new approach to bridging the gap between technology research and clinical research. During the summer school this year, she presented some of her research on a poster.
“The summer school is a great opportunity for me to find others to cooperate with and to find new angles on how to continue with my research,” Kalm says. “I really enjoyed the week because almost all research at KTH was represented. I especially enjoyed the presentation on robots baking pizza after finding the instructions themselves on the internet, and then seeing how this can be applied to elderly care and to helping disabled people.”
The medical technology program is a collaboration effort between KTH and Karolinska Institutet, and Kalm will get a degree from both universities.
“The clinical side and the technical side often have problems communicating,” she says. “My role will be to facilitate that cooperation because there are many ways for both sides to benefit – a bit like the cultural exchange between Sweden and China during summer school.”
Hendrik Bergsten