Title: Promoting Interdisciplinary Engineering Research at Westlake University

 

Westlake University is a new type of research university located in Hangzhou, China. The School of Engineering (SOE), as one of three schools at Westlake University, is devoted to frontier research for the advances of engineering sciences and innovation of technologies. It aims to establish key strengths at the cutting-edge in science and technology through interdisciplinary research of six primary programs and training of forward-thinking students. In this talk, I will briefly introduce the SOE programs, faculty development, and approaches of creating a dynamic academic culture promoting interdisciplinary research and collaboration at Westlake University.

Biography

Professor Jianjun Cheng is the Dean of School of Engineering and Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Westlake University.  He obtained a B.S. degree in Chemistry at Nankai University in 1993 and a Ph.D. degree in Materials Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2001. After completing his postdoctoral studies at MIT in 2005, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.  He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, Full Professor in 2015 and Hans Thurnauer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 2016. He joined the Westlake University in 2021. Cheng is Editor-in-Chief of Biomaterials Science, Royal Society of Chemistry, UK. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of American Chemical Society-Division of Polymer Chemistry, a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors.