On May 20th, 2016, Prof. Minxin Guan, Prof. Xiaohang Yang, Prof. Xiaoming Li and Prof. Zhiying Wu were appointed as dual-employedprofessors by University of Toronto. The appointment ceremony was grandly held in the conference room of the Administrative Building.
Executive president Yonghua Song expressed his warm congratulations on professors and spoke highly of the fruitful multi-disciplinary cooperation between ZheJiang University and University of Toronto. On behalf of the University of Toronto, Prof.Howard Lipshitiz－director of the Molecular Genetics Department of University of Toronto , conferred the letter of appointment to the four professors.
Being a world-class university, the medical discipline of University of Toronto has a great international influence. As a top university in China, Zhejiang University provided her world-class faculties and internationalized affiliated hospitals posed excellent complementary advantages with the University of Toronto in faculty development, equipment and clinical cases. Since 2015, the two universities have set up deep collaborations in areas of scientific research, students exchange programs and joint curriculum. On November 2015, the Joint Institute for Genetics and Genomic Medicine Research was founded and an agreement on joint doctoral candidate training and bilateral doctorate degree awarding was achieved by both sides. In 2016, this mode of collaboration will be applied to other disciplines such as neuroscience and oncology. Moreover, a tentative agreement on joint M. D. program was also reached.
It is noteworthy that this dual-employment of Zhejiang University professors to University of Toronto was the first time ever that University of Toronto had hired foreign professors as dual-employed professors. Unlike the common adjunct professors or visiting professors, dual-employed professors owns the equivalent academic rights as native professors including students admission and projects application etc.
It is also the first time that professors from Zhejing University are entitled equal academic rights with the native professors in a world-class university, and the event was considered to symbolize Zhejiang University`s promotion in internationalization level and international prestige. By means of this dual-employment practice, the two universities can better integrate their own superior resources to impel the development of medical education and scientific research. Prof. Minxin Guan, on behalf of the appointed professors, expressed sincere gratitude to the support provided by Zhejiang University and the long-term pragmatic and fruitful cooperation from University of Toronto. Prof. Zhi Chen, the executive dean of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, heads from related departments along with teacher and student representatives attended the ceremony.
