General manager of China Southern Power Grid leads delegation to visit UM

Qian Chaoyang, general manager and deputy party secretary of China Southern Power Grid Company Limited, led a delegation to visit the University of Macau (UM) today (10 September). The delegation was warmly received by UM Rector Yonghua Song. The two parties had in-depth discussions on deepening cooperation in scientific and technological innovation and expanding collaborative talent development initiatives.

According to Song, UM highly values its cooperation with China Southern Power Grid, which, as a leader in the energy sector, has strong industrial and research capabilities. In 2022, the two parties jointly established the ‘Joint Laboratory of Smart Power and Energy for Carbon Neutrality’, facilitating collaborative research and the application of research results in carbon-neutral energy fields. The initiative has also led to multiple scientific and technological innovations. UM sees China Southern Power Grid as an important strategic partner. Both sides have actively responded to the national strategic needs in smart energy by launching initiatives to train high-calibre talent across multiple levels, which are beginning to show positive results. Song expressed hope that UM and China Southern Power Grid will continue to leverage their strengths to complement each other and realise deeper industry-academia collaboration, thus contributing to the innovative development of the energy and power sectors in Macao, the Greater Bay Area, and the country.

The delegation also visited the University Gallery and the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart Cities to gain a deeper understanding of UM’s achievements in scientific and technological innovation, research platform development, and talent cultivation. They spoke highly of the university’s achievements.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/59009/

UM summer programmes attract students from around the world

The University of Macau (UM) continued to offer a diverse array of summer camps and training courses this year, covering fields such as smart cities, integrated circuits, Chinese medicine, health sciences, artificial intelligence, innovation and entrepreneurship, economics, and languages. These programmes provided a platform for academic and research exchanges for people interested in pursuing a programme at UM. Participants included local and international university students, secondary school students, language learners, university faculty, and industry professionals. Through the programmes, they deepened their understanding of relevant disciplines, broadened their horizons, and enhanced their competitiveness, while promoting educational tourism in Macao.

UM offered more than 30 summer camps and training courses this year. Among them was the ‘5th Summer Camp for Outstanding Students’ jointly organised by the Faculty of Science and Technology and the Institute of Collaborative Innovation of UM. This camp brought together students from world-renowned universities such as the University of Toronto, the University of Manchester, the University of Washington, and Peking University. Under the guidance of professors in various fields, participants gained better insights into UM’s cutting-edge research areas and experienced the charm of technology.

UM’s Faculty of Business Administration, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Global Affairs Office also organisd various summer camps. These included the ‘Summer Camp for Outstanding Students of UM Partner Universities’, the ‘Tsinghua University “Hong Kong and Macao” Summer Course’, the ‘Summer Camp for Outstanding Students’, and the ‘Portuguese Language Summer Programme’. These programmes attracted students from universities in Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, mainland China, and Hong Kong. The participants learned about the education model and the characteristics of the academic programmes offered by the faculties. They also gained knowledge in relevant fields and deepened their understanding of Macao’s history and culture.

The State Key Laboratory of Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI/Institute of Microelectronics and the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City of UM also each organised their second summer camp. Through a series of seminars, workshops, lectures, and experiments, the camps provided a platform for academic exchanges for outstanding university students from top universities in mainland China and Hong Kong. The participants gained insights into the development trends and applications of integrated circuit design and smart city technologies.

In addition, UM’s Centre for Continuing Education offered a variety of training courses for mainland universities during the summer. These courses covered topics such as economics and management, cybersecurity and computer science, artificial intelligence, business communication and leadership, and medical and life sciences. They not only enabled faculty and students from mainland universities to experience UM’s international education setup, but also promoted exchanges and cooperation between UM and mainland universities to promote talent development.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/58969/

UM holds UAUC joint meeting, Ho Iat Seng hopes UM contributes to high-quality development of Macao and country

The University of Macau (UM) held the Joint Meeting of the University Assembly (UA) and University Council (UC) for the 2023/2024 academic year at its Ho Yin Conference Hall on 8 August. Ho Iat Seng, chief executive of the Macao SAR, chancellor of UM and chair of UA, presided over the meeting. During the meeting, he said that Macao is in a new stage of development and should take advantage of its special status and distinctive strengths in national development to promote economic diversification. UM should help develop China into a leading country in education, promote the development of new quality productive forces, and support the country’s high-quality development.

Chancellor Ho Iat Seng set out four expectations for UM’s future development. The first is to seize the development opportunities in the Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin. He pointed out that UM should fully leverage the resources of the Cooperation Zone to create a high-end platform for attracting, gathering, and utilising talent for Macao and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The university should actively explore innovative higher education models and improve the quality of talent development. At the same time, the university should accelerate industry-academia collaboration and promote the commercialisation of research results in the Cooperation Zone. The second is to contribute to the promotion of Macao’s economic diversification. He expressed hope that UM will strengthen the innovation ecosystem by focusing on talent cultivation, original innovation, and integration into the industry chain of the Greater Bay Area, so as to promote the organic integration between the talent chains, innovation chains and industry chains of the university, Macao, and the Cooperation Zone.

The third is to increase the level of internationalisation of Macao’s higher education. Ho suggested that UM should actively explore more innovative ways to attract more high-calibre talent and introduce more high-quality international educational resources, such as science and technology and education models, to Macao and the Cooperation Zone. At the same time, the university should encourage its students and faculty to go global and broaden their international perspective, so as to tell the good stories of Macao and China to the outside world. The fourth is to improve the management of the university. UM should uphold the principle of frugality in its management, ensure the rational use and allocation of resources, and continuously improve the efficiency of its administrative and financial management.

UC Chair Lam Kam Seng Peter summarised UM’s efforts in developing and serving the Greater Bay Area over the past year. He mentioned that UM, as a public comprehensive university in Macao, is fully aware of the role of universities in the development strategy of the Greater Bay Area and will continue to fulfil its functions of talent development and attraction, innovation and resource allocation, social services, and cultural heritage, thereby improving the quality of its academic standards and creating new driving forces and new strengths for development.

At the meeting, UM Rector Yonghua Song gave an overview of UM’s efforts over the past year to improve curriculum design for disciplines and programmes, enhance the quality of talent cultivation, continuously improve academic quality, and expand the university’s international network and international student population. He said that the university will continue to promote the development of key research areas, optimise innovation and implementation platforms related to industry-academia collaboration, and promote the commercialisation of research results, thus contributing to Macao’s economic diversification. In addition, Song presented the progress of the preparations for the implementation of cross-border education in the Cooperation Zone, as well as the future objectives of the new campus, its academic layout and management system.

Participants also had in-depth discussions on UM’s development priorities for the next stage and innovative mathematics education models. The joint meeting was also attended by members of UA and UC, and representatives of relevant departments of UM.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/58764/

UM organises Health Sciences Summer Camp for Outstanding Students of Mainland Universities

The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) of the University of Macau (UM) organised the Health Sciences Summer Camp for Outstanding Students of Mainland Universities 2024. Under the guidance of UM professors, top undergraduate students from five universities in mainland China participated in a variety of research activities to deepen their understanding of health sciences and experience the research atmosphere at UM. The summer camp has also broadened their knowledge about research projects at master’s and doctoral levels.

FHS has been running the summer camp for many years and this year’s edition attracted the participation of 60 outstanding undergraduate students and professors from Zhejiang University, Jilin University, Sichuan University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and Beijing Normal University. At the opening ceremony, Xu Renhe, associate dean of FHS, expressed hope that through a multitude of activities of the summer camp, the participants could learn more about the characteristics of UM’s postgraduate education and the university’s research achievements, as well as experience Macao’s culture. The summer camp offered a wide range of activities, including campus tours, visits to laboratories, and academic talks on topics such as cancer research, stem cells, and data science. It aimed to promote exchanges and cooperation between students and faculty from universities in Macao and mainland China, and to enable the participating students to gain a deeper understanding of UM’s research and academic developments, thus opening up new perspectives for their postgraduate studies.

Students and faculty members who participated in the summer camp spoke highly of UM’s academic standing and research environment. Huang Liquan, a professor from Zhejiang University, said that the summer camp not only broadened students’ global perspective, but also provided an excellent exchange and learning platform for students and faculty members from Macao and mainland China. He looks forward to more opportunities to cooperate with UM in the future, so as to cultivate more elites and promote research development on both sides.

Sun Yuhang, a student from Jilin University, was very impressed by the state-of-the-art facilities in FHS and believes that the research environment in the faculty would enable researchers to unleash their full potential. He Jingqiu, a student from Sichuan University, said that ‘meeting professors’ was one of her favourite activities at the summer camp, as she had the opportunity to interact with professors face-to-face in small discussion groups with other participants, which was different from traditional teaching methods. She also visited the core facilities of FHS and spoke highly of their management, equipment, and research teams. Li Zixi, a student from Beijing Normal University, was delighted to be selected by UM to participate in the summer camp. He said that after gaining a better understanding of UM’s high-calibre faculty members and excellent teaching facilities, he has considered UM as one of his target universities for postgraduate studies.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/58711/

UM invites CAS academician to give talk on new era of intelligent transformation

As part of the University Lecture Series, the University of Macau (UM) will hold a talk titled ‘Thoughts on the New Era of Intelligent Transformation: A Perspective from a Software Technology and Education Practitioner’ on 24 July (Wednesday). Lyu Jian, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), former president of Nanjing University and director of the State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology at Nanjing University, will be the speaker. All are welcome to attend.

Lyu Jian is one of the world’s leading software experts, and his research focuses mainly on intelligent software methodology. He has been honoured with multiple awards, including the first prize of the Natural Science Award of the Ministry of Education, the first prize of the Technological Invention Award of the Ministry of Education, the second prize of the State Science and Technology Progress Award, the second prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award, and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress.

As a software technology expert and educator, Prof Lyu will present a comprehensive analysis of the new era of intelligent transformation from both macro and micro perspectives: ‘the era of intelligence’, ‘a transformative world’, and ‘new software technologies’. He will talk about the basic characteristics, main contents, and coordinated development of the era of intelligence. He will also discuss the changes in the transformative world in various aspects, such as the mode of integration, talent cultivation, research paradigm, university development, and the development of the digital economy. Throughout the talk, Prof Lyu will analyse the systematic structure of the new era of intelligent transformation, reveal the future, and lead the audience into the exciting world of computer software.

The talk will begin at 3:00pm on 24 July (Wednesday) in the Student Activity Centre Theatre (E31-G001) and will be conducted in Mandarin. To register for the talk, please visit https://isw.um.edu.mo/evmapp/register/ULSlyuj. For enquiries, please contact Ms Wong at +853 8822 8878 or by email at uls@um.edu.mo.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/58626/

UM scholar’s book on computational pharmaceutics published by John Wiley & Sons

The book Exploring Computational Pharmaceutics – AI and Modeling in Pharma 4.0, edited by Ouyang Defang, associate professor at the Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, the State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, and the Department of Public Health and Medicinal Administration of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Macau (UM), has been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The book is the second edition of Computational Pharmaceutics. Bringing together leading pharmaceutical experts from academia, industry, and regulatory agencies, the book provides an overview of the changes and advances made in computational pharmaceutics over the past decade and explores the potential and future outlook of the Pharma 4.0 era.

Pharmaceutical scientists are currently faced with the challenges of high costs, long lead times, and low success rates in drug development. Over the past decade, the wave of digital transformation in the pharmaceutical industry has presented new opportunities to improve the efficiency of drug development. Since 2011, Prof Ouyang has pioneered the integration of artificial intelligence and multi-scale modelling in pharmaceutical research, creating a new research field of ‘computational pharmaceutics’. He edited the first monograph in the field, Computational Pharmaceutics, which was published by John Wiley & Sons in 2015 and received wide attention and positive feedback. Over the past decade, the field of computational pharmaceutics has developed rapidly and has been widely applied in the pharmaceutical industry. In response to readers’ expectations and the publisher’s invitation, Prof Ouyang started working on the second edition of Computational Pharmaceutics, Exploring Computational Pharmaceutics ‐ AI and Modeling in Pharma 4.0, in 2021, and the book was successfully published after three years.

The book covers a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, molecular modelling, process simulation, intelligent manufacturing, and quantitative pharmacology. It provides a multi-scale perspective that reveals the physical, chemical and data-driven details of pre-formulation studies, formulation, process, clinical studies, and precision medicine. The chapters also provide specific information on the application of cutting-edge computational technologies in both conventional dosage forms and advanced drug delivery systems. The book is aimed at pharmacologists, computational chemists, and computer scientists. It will also benefit pharmaceutical chemists, clinical pharmacists and materials scientists, and encourage more researchers to engage in the field of computational pharmaceutics, thereby making a significant contribution to the pharmaceutical industry. For publication details, please visit: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119987260.

Prof Ouyang has an interdisciplinary background in pharmacy and computer science, with extensive experience in both the pharmaceutical industry and academia. His research interest is in computational pharmaceutics and he has published over 100 SCI journal papers in the field. Prof Ouyang received his PhD degree from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2010, and was awarded the Dean’s Award for his PhD thesis. He has been a lecturer in pharmaceutics at Aston University, UK, since January 2011, and joined the Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences at UM in November 2014.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/press-release/detail/58619/

Seminar of Regional Liaison Network for Hong Kong and Macao of NSFC held at UM

The Inaugural Seminar of the Regional Liaison Network for Hong Kong and Macao of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) was held today (8 July) at the University of Macau (UM). The seminar brought together heads of research management from universities in Hong Kong and Macao to discuss the management of NSFC projects.

In February this year, NSFC established the Regional Liaison Network for Hong Kong and Macao, its 37th regional liaison network in the country. The network consists of ten universities in Hong Kong and Macao, including UM, which was also elected as the leader institution of the network. In his speech, Ge Wei, vice rector of UM, expressed hope that Hong Kong and Macao science and technology professionals will strengthen their exchanges and cooperation, and make greater contributions to the country’s basic research. The seminar was chaired by Wang Chunming, director of the Research Services and Knowledge Transfer Office of UM. During the seminar, NSFC representatives introduced the NSFC-RGC and NSFC-FDCT Joint Projects, as well as the application status of NSFC funds in 2024. More than 20 heads of research management from the universities also shared their experiences in applying for the funds and managing the funded projects.

To read the news on UM’s official website, please visit the following link:
https://www.um.edu.mo/news-and-press-releases/presss-release/detail/58603/