Recently, the Ministry of Education announced the list of recipients supported by “Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University”. Associate Professor Wang Xudong and Kong Lingxun, and Associate Professor Yang Tian and Xu Kai, altogether 4 professors obtained the support of the program.

“Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University”is the second layer of the three-layer system for talent training and supporting, the development plan of “High-level Creative Talents”of Ministry of Education. It focuses on training and supporting a batch of young outstanding academic pacemakers who have steady academic knowledge, creativity and outstanding developmental potential.

During the last two years, UM-SJTU Joint Institute has not only introduced several internationally renowned academic pacemakers from abroad, but also attracted a number of young outstanding scholars through global recruitment, including the aforementioned four professors. Professor Wang Xudong has received his bachelor, master and doctor degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, then he get PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. After graduation, he accumulated plentiful R&D experience from telecommunication networks of America. He has made several breakthroughs in the theory, system and standardization of protocol and application of wireless mesh networks, and become the influential expert in this field. His research in ultra-low power dynamic-allocated small device for space communication, as well as wireless network with the extendable height on the surface of the moon and self-adaptive lunar orbit communication access was highly appreciated by NASA. After entering UM-SJTU Joint Institute, he has attached importance to crossover study of communication network and energy, transportation, and aeronautics and astronautics. And he plans to cooperate with enterprises to build an influential laboratory in this field.

Professor Sun Lingxun is also an engineering expert at technology development of automotive industry. During the eleven years after he obtained PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, he worked at General Motors, Delphi Corporation and Visteon of USA. His contribution in advanced powertrain system has a direct impact on the increase of the fuel efficiency and reduction of the vehicle emissions. At the Fuel Injection Standards Commission of the International Society of Automotive Engineers, he led a task team composed of many industrial enterprises. They developed and published SAE J2715, the world’s first international standards and regulations for fuel injection testing and characteristics. Given his contribution to the development of global automotive industry standards and regulations, Professor Kong has been conferred with four SAE international Awards, including 2009 SAE/InterRegs Standards and Regulations Award for Young Engineers. This year he will officially start to work in UM-SJTU Joint Institute and aim to work closely with auto companies of China to establish a team with the property right of R&D engine and core technology, which can drive the relevant research and technology application into the forefront of the world.

The research interest of Professor Yang Tian is nano-technology and opto-electronics. Before entering UM-SJTU Joint Institute, he was associate research fellow at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science. He proposed and demonstrated the world’s first edge-emission photonic crystal nanometer laser and its back-to-back coupling with photonic crystal waveguide. This work was significant step forward of research on photonic crystal in high-density integrated circuits, and became one of the significant results reviewed by the world famous magazine Laser Focus World in 2007. In addition, he firstly realized a variety of Quantum Dot Nano-Laser and developed the micro-fluidic nano near-field optical devices for the fast and efficient testing of single molecule DNA. In 2009, he was included in the Marquis Who’s Who in the World and received many invitations to be professor in domestic well-known universities and research fellow in “One Hundred Talents”Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Yang Tian said, supported by “Program for New Century Excellent Talents in the University”, he hoped to form a research team focusing on engineering application with strong physics background to make contributions to the development of photoelectric science and the sustainable development of information industry as well as the personnel training. Professor Xu Kai obtained his PhD from Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University in 2009. His dissertation on “Application of Advanced Robotics Technology in the Clinical Care”was awarded the “Dissertation with Distinction”for its important innovations in this direction. The design patent of Nitinol alloy continuum mechanism jointly completed by his supervisor and himself will upgrade industries of American robots operation system. During the period as doctorial candidate, he published 3 academic papers as first author or second author in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and International Journal of Robotics Research, two world’s top academic journals on robots. Since working in UM-SJTU Joint Institute, he has initiated a wide range of cooperation with SJTU Med-X Research Institute, Department of Physics, School of Mechanical Engineering, and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center of Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University with the aim to promote the application and popularization of the advanced robotic surgical system in China, and realize the leap-forward development of the Chinese medical robotics industry.