On the morning of July 25，Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese Ambassador to UK, took an expeditionary trip to HUST on field survey of HUST's collaboration with UK. The visit was made in the company of Ms. Ma Li, Director of Hubei Foreign Affairs Office, and Mr. Tan Tianxing, Vice Secretary-General of Hubei Provincial Government. Dr. Lu Gang, Chairman of the University Board, held friendly talks with the guests and showed them around WNLO in person.

Lu Gang started with a warm welcome to the ambassador on behalf of the university, then made a general introduction to HUST in terms of its history, education level and scale, disciplinary features, research, talent resources and attention from the central government leaders.  Dr. Lu proudly emphasized in particular the achievements made in the construction of major research platforms and that in the introduction of overseas top talents. As to the collaboration with UK, he mentioned HUST has a good tradition of cooperating with UK institutions and he hoped that HUST would enhance the level of HUST-UK cooperation with support from the ambassador. He pointed out that HUST should integrate its own characteristics with national demand and UK’s traditional strengths to formulate some good collaboration projects.

Ambassador Liu said he was very much impressed by HUST after Dr Lu’s introduction. He pointed out that UK has a group of universities with profound historical, scientific and cultural background and the MOE and MOST have attached considerable importance to collaboration with UK. He specially mentioned UK’s strengths in aerospace engineering, pharmaceutical biotechnology and manufacturing industries, emphasizing strong complementarities between UK and China. He promised that the Science & Technology Division and Education Division of the Embassy would play the role of active liaison and lend all-around support to HUST’s pursuit to establish even closer collaboration with UK.

Later in the morning, the ambassador visited WNLO in Dr. Lu’s company. Prof. Xie Changsheng, Vice Director of the national laboratory, presented the laboratory to the guests and introduced the existing collaboration with UK. Liu spoke highly of the WNLO’s achievement and said the embassy would try its utmost to support WNLO’s development.

Representatives from the School of Life Science and Technology, Department of Control Science and Engineering, Chiang Chen Foundation Industrial Training Center, Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, School of International Education and International Exchange Center joined the talks in the morning.