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Month: May 2022

Advanced materials for renewable and new energy

Posted on by UNIVERSITAS PENDIDIKAN INDONESIA

Advanced Materials for Renewable and New Energy are works written by Prof. Dr. Ida Hamidah, M.Si in the inauguration of a professor at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.

He was appointed as a professor at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in the field of Physics Science.

Still fresh in our memories, how outstanding was China that managed to create a hospital to accommodate its citizens that has been affected by Covid-19 in just ten days.

Ten days is a very quick count to build a hospital on 5.6 hectares of land with a bed capacity of 1000 units. Of course, we really appreciate the Chinese government system that is able to manage an activity very well, which is able to make 7000 workers work day and night without stopping.

But behind that, have you ever thought about what materials/materials they use so that the hospital can stand firm with all its modern equipment? The answer is advanced materials.

Advanced materials are produced by modifying the structure of natural materials so that their characteristics are much better. Some examples of advanced materials are amorphous silicon, amorphous iron, composites, catalysts, and polymers.

Smartphone cases, super light bikes, and high-speed fuselages are some of the latest products that use advanced materials. Scientifically, advanced materials are one of the fields of material physics work in addition to electronic materials, optical materials, magnetic materials, quantum phenomena in materials, physics nonequilibrium, and physics of condensed materials.

With the successful modification of the structure of natural materials, nowadays many advanced materials have been applied in various fields of technology, one of which is technology to harvest energy from something that is moving. This technology is called an energy harvester.

The energy that comes from moving things, such as river water, wind, machinery systems, and the earth’s motion, is the kinetic energy available in our environment that has not been used optimally. Several attempts have been made to capture mobile energy using advanced materials, including piezoelectric materials and carbon nanotubes.

However, low efficiency, low-frequency band, and low device reliability are still the main drawbacks of this concept. Among the causes that reduce the performance of the energy harvester system are the low flexibility of the membrane design and the use of inappropriate materials. Inflexible membranes can reduce the performance of the device to induce an electric current.

Energy harvesting by combining electromagnetic waves is the best alternative way of providing electrical power for a very wide range of applications. For this reason, research on nanomagnetic polymer-based membranes is now a research trend that is quite intensively carried out.

If the performance of the harvester energy system has been optimal, then this is in line with Indonesia’s National Energy policy in the form of increasing the share of new and renewable energy (EBT) from 5% (2014) to 23% (2025).

The government calculates that increasing the share of EBT in the energy mix to 23 percent can save budget up to tens of trillions each year. The EBT portion is targeted to be realized in 2025. The potential to be achieved by EBT in the national energy mix in 2025 is 45.1 gigawatts (GW). With details, 7.2 GW of geothermal, 18 GW of hydropower, 3 GW of mini and micro-hydro, 5.5 GW of bio-energy, 6.5 GW of solar power, 6.5 GW of wind power.

In order to support Indonesia’s National Energy policy, several domestic universities have welcomed it with various programs, for example, the University of Indonesia through the University Development Agency and Logistics Management and the Directorate of Facility Management and Maintenance to develop new and renewable energy program initiatives. Likewise, with the Physics Doctoral Program of Universitas Brawijaya which forms the field of interest in Renewable Energy and the Environment.

It is hoped that awareness of the importance of EBT to maintain a balance in the availability and use of energy on earth is expected to be able to touch all groups, both the public and the government, both stakeholders and institutional leaders. If only all parties work continuously, then it is not impossible that the target of increasing EBT in 2025 will be realized.

Likewise, countries in various parts of the world have realized the importance of developing new and renewable energies by providing understanding and skills about EBT through curricula.

Examples include the Hydrogen Education Curriculum at Michigan Technological University, the Hydrogen Technology and Energy Curriculum at the University of California, and the Innovation Research Center for Fuel Cells at The University of Electro-Communication-Japan. We all understand very well that all technological advances will not be on target without the role of education.

In line with the spirit of the Minister of Education and Culture regarding independent learning, one of which is outlined in the form of Permendikbud No. 3 of 2020 Article 11 paragraph (1), that the characteristics of the learning process consist of interactive, holistic, integrative, scientific, contextual, thematic, effective, collaborative, and student-centered characteristics. For that, Hopefully, all forms of activities to produce technology need to be integrated through research activities in learning.

In this way, it is hoped that students will be able to generate creative ideas to provide solutions to all problems faced, including problems in the supply of new and renewable energy.

Ionic liquid-based reservoir computing: The key to efficient and flexible edge computing

Posted on by Tokyo University of Science

Physical reservoir computing (PRC), which relies on the transient response of physical systems, is an attractive machine learning framework that can perform high-speed processing of time-series signals at low power.

However, PRC systems have low tunability, limiting the signals it can process. Now, researchers from Japan present ionic liquids as an easily tunable physical reservoir device that can be optimized to process signals over a broad range of timescales by simply changing their viscosity.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast becoming ubiquitous in the modern society and will feature a broader implementation in the coming years. In applications involving sensors and internet-of-things devices, the norm is often edge AI, a technology in which the computing and analyses are performed close to the user (where the data is collected) and not far away on a centralized server. This is because edge AI has low power requirements as well as high-speed data processing capabilities, traits that are particularly desirable in processing time-series data in real time.

In this regard, physical reservoir computing (PRC), which relies on the transient dynamics of physical systems, can greatly simplify the computing paradigm of edge AI. This is because PRC can be used to store and process analog signals into those edge AI can efficiently work with and analyze. However, the dynamics of solid PRC systems are characterized by specific timescales that are not easily tunable and are usually too fast for most physical signals. This mismatch in timescales and their low controllability make PRC largely unsuitable for real-time processing of signals in living environments.

To address this issue, a research team from Japan involving Professor Kentaro Kinoshita and Sang-Gyu Koh, a PhD student, from the Tokyo University of Science, and senior researchers Dr. Hiroyuki Akinaga, Dr. Hisashi Shima, and Dr. Yasuhisa Naitoh from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, proposed, in a new study published in Scientific Reports, the use of liquid PRC systems instead.

“Replacing conventional solid reservoirs with liquid ones should lead to AI devices that can directly learn at the time scales of environmentally generated signals, such as voice and vibrations, in real time,” explains Prof. Kinoshita. “Ionic liquids are stable molten salts that are completely made up of free-roaming electrical charges. The dielectric relaxation of the ionic liquid, or how its charges rearrange as a response to an electric signal, could be used as a reservoir and is holds much promise for edge AI physical computing.”

In their study, the team designed a PRC system with an ionic liquid (IL) of an organic salt, 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethane sulfonyl)imide ([Rmim+] [TFSI-] R = ethyl (e), butyl (b), hexyl (h), and octyl (o)), whose cationic part (the positively charged ion) can be easily varied with the length of a chosen alkyl chain. They fabricated gold gap electrodes, and filled in the gaps with the IL. “We found that the timescale of the reservoir, while complex in nature, can be directly controlled by the viscosity of the IL, which depends on the length of the cationic alkyl chain.

Changing the alkyl group in organic salts is easy to do, and presents us with a controllable, designable system for a range of signal lifetimes, allowing a broad range of computing applications in the future,” says Prof. Kinoshita. By adjusting the alkyl chain length between 2 and 8 units, the researchers achieved characteristic response times that ranged between 1 – 20 ms, with longer alkyl sidechains leading to longer response times and tunable AI learning performance of devices.

The tunability of the system was demonstrated using an AI image identification task. The AI was presented a handwritten image as the input, which was represented by 1 ms width rectangular pulse voltages. By increasing the side chain length, the team made the transient dynamics approach that of the target signal, with the discrimination rate improving for higher chain lengths. This is because, compared to [emim+] [TFSI-], in which the current relaxed to its value in about 1 ms, the IL with a longer side chain and, in turn, longer relaxation time retained the history of the time series data better, improving identification accuracy. When the longest sidechain of 8 units was used, the discrimination rate reached a peak value of 90.2%.

These findings are encouraging as they clearly show that the proposed PRC system based on the dielectric relaxation at an electrode-ionic liquid interface can be suitably tuned according to the input signals by simply changing the IL’s viscosity. This could pave the way for edge AI devices that can accurately learn the various signals produced in the living environment in real time.

Computing has never been more flexible!

***

Reference

Authors: Sang-Gyu Koh1, 2, Hisashi Shima2, Yasuhisa Naitoh2, Hiroyuki Akinaga2, and Kentaro Kinoshita1

Title of original paper: Reservoir computing with dielectric relaxation at an electrode– ionic liquid interface

Journal: Scientific Reports

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-10152-9

Affiliations:

1Department of Applied Physics, Tokyo University of Science

2Device Technology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

About Professor Kinoshita Kentaro from Tokyo University of Science

Kinoshita Kentaro is a Professor at the Department of Applied Physics at Tokyo University of Science, Japan. His area of interest is device physics, with a focus on memory devices, AI devices, and functional materials. He has published 105 papers with over 1600 citations to his credit and holds a patent to his name. For more information, visit: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/fac/p/index.php?6e52&ls=gk

EdUHK research reveals healthy eating education improves young adults’ eating habits

Posted on by eduhk

A population health survey in Hong Kong revealed that 50% of people aged 15 to 84 were either overweight or obese because of insufficient intake of wholegrains, fruits, and vegetables, and the increasing consumption of sugar-sweetened and alcoholic beverages, convenience foods, take-out food, and other high-density, low-nutrient foods.

The research by Dr Louisa Chung Ming-yan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Health and Physical Education, The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), found that public education to promote awareness of healthy eating and transferring knowledge about balanced diets has played a pivotal role in positively changing people’s eating behaviour in Hong Kong.

Younger adults, however, are found to lack skills in planning, purchasing, preparing, and cooking healthy meals at home, and tend to select nutritionally-inadequate pre-packaged foods. Establishing healthy eating habits is considered to be a sustainable strategy for good health maintenance, and mobile apps are expected to be a highly effective way to promote healthy eating among young adults. But there are few interventions that apply apps to improve younger adults’ nutrition behaviour.

In this study, a dietary monitoring mobile app, called the “eDietary Portal” (the App), integrated with behavioural feedback, was evaluated in people aged 19 to 39. The primary aim was to investigate the effectiveness of the App in improving the nutrition knowledge and dietary habits of younger adults by increasing the consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and decreasing the consumption of salt and sugar.

Both the experimental group and the control group were given a three-hour nutrition seminar, but the experimental group also underwent 12 weeks of dietary monitoring with the App. Behavioural feedback delivered by the App was evaluated to facilitate the transfer of nutritional knowledge to nutrition behaviour. Baseline and post-intervention nutrition knowledge and dietary behaviour were collected. All mean scores of post-GNKQ-R increased from the baseline for both the control and experimental groups.

The study found that both the control group and the experimental group improved their nutrition knowledge, thanks to the seminar, but the App encouraged dietary reflection, making the experimental subjects more capable of matching food products to food categories, choosing healthy foods, and selecting foods to reduce health problems and the risk of disease.

Both the control group and the experimental group increased their intake of dietary fibre, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables, but the increase was greater in the experimental group, particularly fruit and vegetable consumption. The experimental group reduced sugar consumption more than the control group, but the difference in salt consumption was insignificant. Larger individuals in the experimental group were more likely to increase fruit consumption.

The research concluded that the integration of knowledge transfer about healthy eating with a mobile app is essential for technology-immersed young people. Healthy eating promotion conducted with appropriate technology apps can help users to acquire information flexibly in terms of time, pace, and place, can be adapted to individual needs, and allows reflection by users.

To learn more about the study, please click here.

Thammasat Digital Skill Space, a course to shape ‘investors’ of the future

Posted on by Thammasat University

Thammasat University in collaboration with the Stock Exchange of Thailand and SkillLane Education Company Limited has launched the “Thammasat Digital Skill Space” project which is a development of a comprehensive investment learning course.

Students will obtain a deep understanding of the capital market ecosystem and be trained in sustainable investment skills amid the changing and uncertainty of the future world. This project will provide opportunities for Thammasat students to learn, collect and transfer credits or can be counted as elective courses or free elective courses according to the course requirements. In the future, there will be opportunities for students of all institutions, high school students as well as those who are interested in to attend.

Assoc. Prof. Gasinee Witoonchart, Rector of Thammasat University, said that the rapid and drastic changes in the modern world have caused the role of universities and educational institutions to change accordingly.

The World Economic Forum predicts that within the next 5 years around the world, as many as 85 million jobs will be lost, while 97 million new jobs will be occured. However, there will be a lot of unemployed persons, while many jobs will not be done by anyone. As these people do not have the skills to do new jobs, universities or educational institutions therefore need to rethink on how to respond to this question raised.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phipop Udon, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs, Thammasat University said that within the Thammasat Digital Skill Space project, there will be an intensive development of investment learning courses, starting from an online course of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET e-Learning) that provides knowledge from basic to advanced knowledge such as financial planning, investment in stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, bonds, etc.

Thammasat University as a leading educational institution with outstanding business school accredited by three global accreditation institutions in business administration (Triple Crown) will redesign such knowledge set into “courses” that are in line with today’s changes, while SkillLane as an online education experts will join forces to develop a platform that makes learning accessible to everyone.

Dr.Pakorn Pitathawatchai, Director and Manager, the Stock Exchange of Thailand said that the Stock Exchange of Thailand aims to develop the capital market to benefit all sectors. One of the key missions that has been carried out continuously is to promote financial literacy, especially among students. The Stock Exchange of Thailand has continuously worked with universities to disseminate knowledge with body of knowledge and media that the Stock Exchange of Thailand has developed which can be used as a tool for further development of courses systematically in the university.

Mr. Thitipong Phisitwuthinan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of SkillLane said, “In the present, technology has made it easier, faster and better for people to learn, which is in line with today’s behavior. From our direct experience in developing online learning platform for many leading organizations, including having previously collaborated with Thammasat University in TUXSA Project, an online master’s degree programs that has been successfully operated. This has proven that our technology provides people with unrestricted access to quality education in terms of time and place.”

However, the courses that will be offered online are: 1. TU201: Financial Literacy for Individuals 2. TU202: Complete Investment and 3. TU: 301: Investment in the Stock Market

Early detection saves lives: HPV testing kits Chula’s innovation for women’s health

Posted on by Chulalongkorn University

Chulalongkorn University’s researchers have developed a cervical cancer test kit that uses urine samples. A simple, accurate, and fast method of early detection is guaranteed for its quality by the 2021 Outstanding Inventions Award from the National Research Council of Thailand.

Cervical cancer can be cured if detected in its early stages. Many women are, however, deterred by the rather high cost of the screening procedure, and the pap smear testing method. This leads to late detection that can cause cancer to spread making it harder to treat.

Today, there is a new invention that makes cervical cancer treatment a simpler and pain-free procedure that can be done frequently.

The HPV paper-based DNA sensor testing kits for cervical cancer developed by the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University’s research team comprising Prof. Dr. Orawan Chailapakul, Dr. Prinjaporn Tee-ngam, Sarida Naorungroj, Dr. Somrak Petchcomchai along with Prof. Dr. Tirayut Vilaivan

Dr. Prinjaporn, one of the main researchers on the team discussed how this innovation was conceived, “The government has consistently urged women to get tested for cervical cancer. One of the limitations of the original form of testing which requires taking a sample of cells from the cervix on stirrups invokes fear in many women who would rather avoid the test altogether. For this reason, we have tried to find an easier way that most women would feel more comfortable with. This could help to increase the number of those being tested as well as the frequency of their tests so that if any anomalies are found, then treatment can be immediately provided.”

Getting to know cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer of women in Thailand after breast cancer with an incidence rate of 10,000 new cases per year affecting women between the ages of 30-60 and claiming as many as 5,000 deaths each year. The Ministry of Public Health recommends that from the age of 25 women should receive regular screening for cervical cancer every five years.

Prof. Dr. Orawan explains that cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease, mainly caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV). The use of condoms as protection cannot prevent such transmission, and the HPV vaccine is not yet prevalent or provides 100% protection against cervical cancer.

She also stressed that “Most of those who have been affected are asymptomatic which makes it necessary for us to still be tested regularly since that is a crucial way to prevent us from the disease and death.”

The HPV paper-based DNA sensor testing kits

The cervical cancer testing kits are easier and much faster than the Pap Smear or Pap Tests currently in use. It eliminates the need to insert a tool and hold the vaginal walls open as well as swabbing over the cervix to take cell samples that are sent to the lab for testing.

“HPV paper-based sensor testing is a way to test the DNA of the HPV virus by using PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acid) which is a synthetic substance that imitates our DNA designed to be specific according to the cells being tested which can be specified since HPV comes in many different strains and not all strains cause cervical cancer. When designing the substance, we needed to determine which strains there were when it comes to HPV infection,” said Prof. Dr. Orawan.

The HPV paper-based sensor testing kit is something that a lot of us are already familiar with from the ATK tests we have undergone for COVID-19.

“The urine is mixed in a solution then dropped onto the paper after which we notice the change in color of the solution. Normally the color of the solution is bright red but if the urine is contaminated by the virus the color appears lighter. The brightness of the color varies according to the amount of the virus. We have an additional tool, used with the colorimeter application on smartphones that helps make the color more visible.”

Prof. Dr. Orawan assured us that the HPV paper-based sensor testing kit has been tested and shows a high level of accuracy with a sensitivity of 85%, specificity of 78%, and reproducibility rate of 100%.”

The HPV Testing Kits have not been produced for home use. They are, however, being used in health centers and community hospitals.

“In the urine, there are fewer DNA materials than in tissues, which means we need to have a device that increases the DNA level so that the change of color is more visible and the device is already in use in the clinics and community hospitals.”

How to watch over our health to stay away from cervical cancer

Prof. Dr. Orawan left us with some tips on how to help women stay safe from cervical cancer. “First, women should make sure they always keep their vaginal areas clean. Vaccinations are good but the prevention they offer isn’t a hundred percent. The best way is to have regular cervical cancer checkups for early detection and treatment.”

The research team hopes that this innovation will motivate women to get themselves tested regularly, with a simple and painless process, at an affordable price. Each test kit should not exceed 500 baht.

Prof. Dr. Orawan left us with these words. “We’d like to see women getting cervical cancer tests regularly as advised by the Ministry of Public Health. Therefore, we have tried to make the cost of these kits as low as possible to make them easily accessible. It would be ideal if women can be tested regularly, for example once a month at a health center nearby.”

Nursing facilities or agencies interested in these HPV paper-based DNA sensor testing kits may contact Prof. Dr. Orawan Chailapakul at the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, email address [email protected] for more information.

Gut microbiota: World’s first discovery by CUHK to combat long COVID

Posted on by Editorial Team

The Microbiota I-(MagIC)-Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has identified distinct gut microbiome profiles associated with post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, commonly known as ‘long COVID’.

These gut microbial signatures can be used to predict the risk of developing long COVID in patients with acute infection and to diagnose long COVID in recovered patients with persistent unexplained symptoms. This is the world’s first study to demonstrate gut microbiota as a key determinant of long COVID. The results have been published in a leading international journal, Gut.

More than 500 million people have suffered from COVID-19 globally. This study in Hong Kong found that up to 80% of recovered patients developed long COVID at six months, characterised mostly by fatigue, poor memory, difficulty in sleeping and hair loss in the weeks and months after the initial infection.

Decoding the links to specific long COVID symptoms

The study found that some 76% of patients had at least one persistent symptom six months after recovery from COVID-19. Contrary to conventional belief, factors such as age, gender, co-morbidities, severity of COVID-19, and the use of antibiotics or anti-viral drugs were not associated with the occurrence of long COVID.

Interestingly, it was found that patients with long COVID had less diverse gut microbiome, while the gut microbiome of patients without long COVID was similar to that of uninfected people. Using a machine-learning model to analyse over 1,400 stool samples, the team has identified ‘bacteria signatures’ that can predict long COVID with over 90% sensitivity and specificity.

For example, a lack of certain ‘friendly’ immunity-boosting bacteria was strongly associated with persistent respiratory symptoms such as cough or shortness of breath, whereas the abundance of certain pathogens was linked to fatigue and neuropsychiatric symptoms including difficulty in sleeping, poor memory and loss of taste.

It follows that the team can potentially utilise gut microbiome as a biomarker to predict, detect and treat long COVID; in particular, different bacteria signatures can account for different ‘subtypes’ of long COVID symptoms according to the organs predominantly involved.

A diagram showing the association between gut microbiome composition and long COVID.

Preventing and treating long COVID

In a pilot study of recovered COVID-19 patients who received a novel gut microbiome immunity formula (SIM01) developed by CUHK, 90% of them did not develop long COVID at six months. A large-scale randomised trial is underway to confirm the efficacy of this formula, which offers hope for the prevention and alleviation of long COVID.

Prof. Francis Chan, Dean of Medicine and Co-Director of MagIC Centre, remarked, ‘Our findings demonstrate that individuals’ gut microbiome profiles affect their susceptibility to long COVID. Our discovery does not only for the first time offer a scientific explanation for long COVID, but also provides an effective tool for prediction, diagnosis and treatment of this global health problem.’

Prof. Siew Chien Ng, Professor and Director of MagIC Centre, added, ‘Our study showed that microbiome-based profiling is potentially useful for risk assessment, timely diagnosis and targeted treatment of long COVID. These new findings also indicate that, in addition to hastening recovery from acute COVID-19 infection, our microbiome immunity formula (SIM01) is potentially effective in preventing long COVID.’

This study was funded by Inno@HK of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the HKSAR Government.

Please refer to the latest eNews for updates about CUHK.

Education forum highlights the importance of partnerships with China

Posted on by Editorial Team

Lingnan University in Hong Kong recently hosted a roundtable discussion on the theme of “Creating a New Destination Market” as part of the QS Higher Education Summit China 2022.

The mid-April online event saw speakers examine issues affecting student mobility, research exchanges, scholarship funding and partnerships between institutions at a time when diplomatic tensions and COVID-19 have brought many new challenges.

A key consideration was whether there is a “paradigm shift in the making”, as universities in Hong Kong and China take steps to circumvent current obstacles and position themselves as attractive destination markets for overseas undergraduates and research students.

Statistics show that almost half a million international students chose the China region as their study destination in 2019 and, despite subsequent disruptions, the number has remained relatively stable.

Underlying trends indicate admissions from some “source countries” are rising, while elsewhere they are in decline.

However, more courses are being tailor-made for overseas applicants, universities are looking to export certain education models, and for those in the region’s “knowledge economy”, success in the face of stiff competition from other international markets, has become a major objective.

Professor Leonard K Cheng, President of Lingnan University, noted that Hong Kong’s universities still face some operating constraints in admitting non-local students.

These relate predominantly to government funding for undergraduate programmes, with a cap of around 20 per cent on mainland China or overseas students, who pay higher tuition fees.

There are, though, self-financed and taught postgraduate (TPg) programmes, for which tuition fees are in effect determined by market competition.

“We’re also working to establish joint schools or colleges [with partners in the Greater Bay Area] to enrich students’ learning experience and tap into the possibilities for research and co-supervision of PhD students.” Cheng said.

“The rise of China in terms of education and research capability will be the key driver for partnerships and student mobility. China will move up the global pyramid as the ‘local knowledge’ aspect starts to count more.”

Professor Wenqin Shen, Associate Professor at Peking University’s Graduate School of Education, noted four main reasons for China’s increasing appeal to international students. One is generous scholarships at national level. Another is comparatively cheap tuition fees, especially for medicine and engineering.

Third is the now extensive alumni network. And fourth is “language capital”, which gives an advantage in the labour market.

A pressing challenge, though, is extending STEM research partnerships with overseas institutions amid sensitivities about anything high-tech.

“The number of science, engineering and computer science students going abroad has decreased very fast in the last two years,” Shen said.

Even so, Professor Shalendra Sharma, Associate Vice President (Quality Assurance and Internationalisation) at Lingnan University, was confident about future two-way exchanges, based on China’s burgeoning reputation for advances in nanotechnology, robotics and AI, and opportunites to transfer credits.

For Professor Anthony Welch, Professor of Education at the University of Sydney, partnerships benefit students, faculty members and research initiatives.

“It strengthens both sides,” he said. “Chinese universities are now hugely competitive and often world-leading.”