The Third China-Israel Innovation Forum held in Shen Zhen
From November 30th to December 1st, 2018, the Third China-Israel Innovation Forum, jointly sponsored by Tel Aviv University, Tsinghua University and the Morn-ingside Group, was held in Shenzhen. This forum aims to promote cooperative re-search and cooperative technological exploration and to foster joint ventures between the two countries. President Qiu Yong of Tsinghua University, President Joseph Klafter of Tel Aviv University, and Ronnie C. Chan, Co-founder of the Morningside Group and Chairman of Hang Lung Properties attended the opening ceremony. Also presented at the opening ceremony were His Excellency Zvi Heifetz, Ambassador of the State of Israel to China, Vice Mayor Wang Lixin of Shenzhen, and, attended the opening ceremony of the forum and delivered speeches.
President Qiu noted in his address that the 21st century is an era of innovation. “World-class universities should not only harness their own unique education methods for greater development, but also take advantage of new resources and opportunities to enhance their global innovative capabilities.” The China-Israel Innovation Forum, jointly launched by Tsinghua University, Tel Aviv University and the Morningside Group in 2016, has always focused on the theme of innovation. The Third China-Israel Innovation Forum has established a good platform for China-Israel cooperation and development in the field of innovation. It was hoped that the participants could engage in an open dialogue and inspire one another to contribute greater wisdom and energy for the innovative development of both countries.
President Joseph Krafter of Tel Aviv University pointed out that Tsinghua Uni-versity has always been a long-term partner of Tel Aviv University. From the XIN Center at Tsinghua University to the China-Israel 7+7 Research University Alliance, a solid foundation for long-term cooperation has been laid out between the two univer-sities. President Joseph Krafter expressed his expectation for the two sides to further deepen friendship and strengthen cooperation.
In his speech, His Excellency Zvi Heifetz, Ambassador of the State of Israel to China, said that he was pleased to see the vigorous development of cooperation be-tween China and Israel in the field of higher education. This cooperation between Chinese and Israeli universities had a broad scope as it not only covered scientific and technological innovation and research results but also effectively promoted exchanges between the two sides in the fields of education, economy and culture. China had pro-posed and actively implemented “the Belt and Road Initiative”, providing a broad space for China-Israel cooperation. Tsinghua University was rich in human resources and research forces, and would certainly play an important role in promoting the de-velopment of China-Israel relations.
At the opening ceremony of the forum, guests jointly unveiled TAU-TBSI Inno-vation Collaborative Office in Shenzhen, which serves as Shenzhen’s point of contact for strategic cooperation between the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) and Tel Aviv University. It will assist the two sides in research cooperation, academic exchanges, university-enterprise cooperation and bilateral commercial exchanges in the future. This provides more support for bilateral talent exchanges, academic ex-changes, achievement transformation, project incubation and international coopera-tion. Yaron Oz, Rector of Tel Aviv University, and Zhang Lin, Co-Director of the Tsinghua - Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, pointed out that the Innovation Liaison Office acts as a bridge to undertake the transformation, and to promote cooperative technolo-gies between the two universities in Shenzhen and the coordinated development of regional innovation.
During the forum, guests from China and Israel discussed five areas covering ar-tificial intelligence, the world economic order, digital health, blockchain and regional civilization exchanges.
Writer: Annie Chen
Editors: John Olbrich, Guo Lili
