On July 31, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed between Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL) and Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School (PKUSZ) for strategic collaboration.

The MOU was signed by SZBL Executive Vice Director WU Yun-Dong and PKUSZ Chancellor ZHAN Qimin at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen. Attending the Signing Ceremony were GAO Yiqin, SZBL Senior Research Scientist and Vice Dean to Shenzhen Institute for Health Sciences; WU Hong, Advisor to the Dean of Shenzhen Institute for Health Sciences; ZHAN Qimin, Chancellor of PKUSZ; TAN Wenchang, Secretary of PKUSZ Party Affairs Committee and Vice Chancellor of PKUSZ; YANG Zhen, Vice Chancellor of PKUSZ; TU Huan, Vice Chancellor of PKUSZ.

WU Yun-Dong, Executive Vice Director of SZBL, said that the SZBL endeavors would be committed to serving national and provincial deployments in key and strategic aspects, integrating advanced resources in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA), and to convening the brightest minds for scientific development. This collaboration would provide a basis for SZBL and PKUSZ to better leverage their intellectual competitiveness through the model of joint appointment. Future collaborative areas would include discovery towards major sci-tech issues, research platform construction and talent-nurturing.

Given the well-inherited PKU nature in disciplinary competitiveness, supported by the GBA-based regional advantage and inspired by the trans-disciplinary philosophy, the establishment of PKUSZ had been a crucial step for PKU to realize its strategic vision of building a research-intensive international campus in Shenzhen and becoming a first-class global university for PKU as a whole, said by PKUSZ Chancellor ZHAN Qimin. In his speech, ZHAN Qimin also pointed out that PKUSZ and SZBL would work in an open and complementary partnership and seek for win-win cooperation based on the MOU. On this threshold of collaboration, SZBL would foster efforts to integrate resources in the GBA, enhance technology transfer and to serve the greater good for social and industrial development.

This collaboration is underpinned by a blueprint outlining the vision of a state laboratory. To realize the potential, SZBL and PKUSZ will build strengths upon existing infrastructural and intellectual foundation to lead high-quality research and discoveries, and will contribute efforts in boosting the growth of biomedical industries and clinical trails across the GBA.