TAU strengthens ties with China ahead of PM’s trip

Joint research and exchange visits by researchers and students to take place this summer, says university president Prof. Yosef Klafter.

By DANIELLE ZIRI
Students at Tel Aviv University 370 (photo credit: Danielle Ziri)
Students at Tel Aviv University 370
(photo credit: Danielle Ziri)
Over 200 students and faculty members from China studied at Tel Aviv University in 2012, according to a report released by the university as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu headed to Shanghai and Beijing on Sunday.
TAU stated it had been strengthening its ties with the leading universities in the country. In the past year, the university has forged broad collaborations with Tsinghua University in Beijing.
“For some time now, China has no longer been the future,” TAU President Prof. Yosef Klafter said in a statement. “China is the present.”
“There is accelerated development of the Chinese university system, and the research institutes in particular, and we see that the research programs with which we are collaborating are headed by faculty members who have received their training at top universities in the United States and Europe,” he continued.
Klafter added in light of TAU’s strategic decision to strengthen its international presence in East Asia, China is “obviously a preferred target.”
“We are looking for the best institutions and there is no doubt that Tsinghua is among the very finest of them,” he said.
Two delegations from Tsinghua University are currently taking part in a twoweek visit to TAU as part of a wider collaboration in the fields of nanotechnology, life sciences and business administration.
The trip includes seminars, lectures, tours of laboratories and meeting with Israeli colleagues.
According to Klafter, the cooperation comprises of joint research, and exchange visits by researchers and students, which will take place this summer.
The delegations came after a group of 45 people headed by the Dean of of the Faculty of Management at Tsinghua was in Israel last month. Last year, Klafter and Vice President of TAU Prof. Raanan Rein had also traveled to China for the purpose of academic collaboration.
Representatives from Hong Kong University for Science and Technology are also expected to arrive to TAU later this year. In addition, the Israeli university announced it is also holding a joint workshop with researchers from Renmin University in Beijing in the fields of social sciences and humanities.