This release is available in Chinese.
Fudan University in Shanghai is launching a Chinese hub of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in a significant and long-lasting partnership with the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The new Tyndall Centre Fudan will unite the research and teaching strength of two world-leading institutions to explore potential answers to climate change.
Tyndall Centre Fudan and Tyndall Centre UK will together research the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors of the economy and how to adapt people and places to the impacts of climate change. This new initiative will embrace reciprocal teaching, joint research and knowledge transfer.
Professor Academician Yuliang Yang will be awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of East Anglia on May 4 in recognition of his intellectual leadership and of his academic esteem. An Agreement of Collaboration will be co-signed by the Vice Chancellor of UEA, Prof Edward Acton, and President Yang, officially marking the beginning of this new chapter in UK-China University Alliances.
Immediately after the Degree Ceremony, Mr Richard Jewson, Her Majesty's Lord-Lieutenant of Norfolk and the Queen's representative, will launch Tyndall Centre Fudan.
"Tyndall Centre Fudan is a great opportunity to further transform Fudan University into a world-leading and global institution," said President Yang.
Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer at UEA said: 'It is a huge honour to enter this partnership with Fudan University. I see this collaboration as transformational for the Tyndall Centre, and Fudan sees it as potentially transformational for China".
Professor Davies will be the Director of Strategy for Tyndall Centre Fudan.
Fudan is a major university of world standing and is one of the top three of 2000 universities in China. It consists of 45,000 students in one of the world's mega-cities, and has excellence in many academic disciplines.
UEA is rated just after Harvard and Princeton for its environmental science publications over the past 10 years (Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators 2009) and Norwich has the fourth greatest concentration of the most highly published researchers in the UK, after London, Oxford and Cambridge.
The Tyndall Centre has developed an outstanding international reputation for its research into sustainable options for climate change, and for providing an independent evidence-base to UK, EU and international policy makers. The Tyndall Centre is regarded internationally as an exemplar of the type of deeply interdisciplinary research which is needed to rise to the challenge of climate change, as well as being a model of cooperation between universities.
Founded in 2000 and led by UEA, the Tyndall Centre comprises a partnership of the Universities of Manchester, Oxford, Sussex, Newcastle, Southampton and Cambridge. There will be a reciprocal launch in Shanghai of Tyndall Centre Fudan later this year.
"There is a growing recognition that environmental sciences research needs to develop the type of intellectual armoury exemplified by the Tyndall Centre to meet the inter-related set of policy challenges which climate change brings," said Professor Davies. "Together developing this approach in China is of world significance to international research."
China's activity in science and technology is impressive and is poised to become a major global force in many research disciplines.
In addition to the research collaboration, UEA will help Fudan build an exemplar low energy building on Fudan's new campus that will become the home of Tyndall Centre Fudan. UEA has been at the forefront of low carbon campus buildings since it built its first in 1994, then described by the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers as 'the best building ever'. The Zuckerman Institute building, home to the Tyndall Centre at UEA, won the first ever Low Carbon Building award in 2005. Three new low carbon buildings have been constructed since. UEA powers its buildings with efficient heating and cooling and this year built a biomass power station to provide electricity to the campus.
There will be many different types of collaboration between UEA and Fudan, including PhD and MSc training, joint appointments, and research exchanges. Fudan University will put significant investment into Tyndall Centre Fudan to implement its world-leading research agenda.