The 24th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals opened in Shanghai on 11 November. Shen Yiqin, State Councilor, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech. Under the theme "Gathering the Global Talents, Pursuing Win-Win Cooperation", the conference brought together more than 3,100 foreign experts from over 120 countries and regions at its opening ceremony.
Konstantin Novoselov, Nobel laureate in Physics, foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and foreign director of Konstantin Lab of Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT), and of the Discipline Innovation and Talent Introduction Base for Intelligent Materials and Chemical Engineering at GDUT, spoke as a guest representative. Bai Jiangang, Secretary of CPC GDUT Committee; Du Chengming, Member of the Standing CPC GDUT Committee, Vice President; Zhang Shanqing, Chinese director of the Konstantin Lab of GDUT, and the Innovation and Talent Introduction Base, professor at the School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry; and domestic and international experts invited by GDUT attended the opening ceremony and related events.
In his address, Prof. Novoselov noted that he has long carried out in-depth cooperation in the field of graphene with leading institutions in China, and that his partnership with GDUT is a particularly typical example. In 2004 he first isolated graphene, which later earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since 2023 he has co-built a laboratory with Prof. Zhang Shanqing's team, focusing on the application of graphene and other advanced materials in smart materials and new energy, and drawing on the industrial ecosystem of the Greater Bay Area to explore next-generation technologies. Turning laboratory samples into products with stable performance, mass production and controllable costs remains a challenge commonly faced in industrialisation worldwide.
Innovation beyond borders
"Tackling this challenge requires talent above all — especially interdisciplinary talent cultivated through joint laboratories, collaborative research projects and joint training mechanisms." In Prof. Novoselov's view, the value of international talent exchange lies not only in bringing together experts from various countries, but also in building a shared scientific discourse, enabling innovation to break through national borders and allowing researchers from different regions and backgrounds to tackle difficult problems together. The conference, he said, provides exactly such a platform, building a global talent network in which young scientists from around the world can thrive. He looks forward to joint efforts that will take graphene research from paper to application and from technology to industry, releasing the enormous value of advanced materials at an early date.
Attracting More Talent to GDUT
Turning blueprints into reality depends on talent. Chairman Bai said that GDUT is anchoring its efforts on the goal of building itself into a "Double First-Class" university, making systematic arrangements across key tracks such as high-end instruments, materials and chemical engineering, new energy, new-type energy storage, intelligent manufacturing, medical-engineering integration and life sciences. The University was invited to bring a delegation to this event — the largest and most prestigious gathering of its kind for global sci-tech innovation talent — precisely in the hope that more outstanding talent will see the opportunity in Greater Bay Area and come to GDUT.
The joint laboratory with Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov is a vivid example of how GDUT uses high-level international scientific and technological cooperation to attract high-level talent and to promote the integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial innovation. In recent years, the University has adhered to a strategy of strengthening itself through talent, building a full-chain system for attracting, cultivating, utilising and retaining talent, implementing the "Hundred Talents Programme" and the "Young Hundred Talents Programme", adopting a case-by-case approach for high-level leading talent, and drawing on platforms such as the State Key Laboratory and the Discipline Innovation and Talent Introduction Base to gather and nurture talent, while expanding international talent exchange through the International Young Scholars Forum, overseas training for faculty and joint training programmes. The University now has more than 500 talents at provincial and ministerial level or above, 79% of whom were cultivated in-house. This concentration of talent has strongly driven the upgrading of its disciplines: 11 disciplines now rank in the global top 1% of the ESI, four in the top 1‰, and Engineering in the top 0.23‰ worldwide.
From the banks of the Huangpu River to the shores of the Pearl River, Guangdong University of Technology is embracing global talent with an ever more open posture, so that more seeds of cooperation may sprout in mutual trust and grow through exchange.
