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NSFC establishes partnership with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment of New Zealand

In late November 2023, Prof. Yu Jihong, Vice President of NSFC, led a delegation to visit New Zealand and met with the leadership of four New Zealand organizations, namely Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Royal Society New Zealand, NZ-China Non-Communicable Diseases Research Collaboration Centre (NCD CRCC) and University of Otago.

During the meeting with MBIE Deputy Secretary Dr. Nic Blakeley, Prof. Yu highlighted that China and New Zealand have great potential for collaborations in such areas as food, environment, health and biomedicine, climate change, new materials as well as new energy. She said that NSFC hopes to build a productive partnership with MBIE so as to foster more partnerships between scientific communities of the two countries. Dr. Blakley emphasized MBIE’s continued commitment to research collaborations with China. The two sides had a brief discussion on the initial step of the substantive collaboration before signing the Memorandum of Arrangement to formally establish partnership.

The meeting with Mr. Paul Atkins, CEO of Royal Society New Zealand focused on the exchange of ideas on funding the most talented researchers. Both sides agreed that more international academic exchange opportunities should be available for young researchers and students.

When at the University of Otago, Prof. Yu met with Prof. Parry Guilford, Deputy Director of NCD CRCC, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. Richard Blaikie and Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. Phil Bremer successively, and held a seminar with senior researchers supported by NCD CRCC.

Throughout the visit, the delegation introduced the latest reform measures taken by NSFC’s new leadership to strengthen the support for young researchers, encourage academic exchanges in basic research and applied basic research, and to better facilitate international scientific collaborations, which received positive responses from the four organizations.