From April 27 to 29, 2023, the university President Jin Donghan led a delegation to visit Italian Politecnico di Milano and Polihub incubator.
While at the Italian Politecnico di Milano, the delegation met with Giuliano Noci, Vice President of China Affairs of Italian Politecnico di Milano and Ilaria Valente, Vice President of International Affairs of Italian Politecnico di Milano.
Giuliano Noci welcomed the arrival of the delegation and pointed out that Italian Politecnico di Milano attached great importance to the strategic cooperation with Tianjin University and hoped that the two sides could further deepen their education and scientific research cooperation in the fields of architecture and construction. President Jin Donghan expressed gratitude to the universtiy and stated that Italian Politecnico di Milano is the preferred partner for visits for post epidemic visits, demonstrating the importance of strategic cooperation between two sides. In recent years, both sides have overcome the impact of coronavirus and conducted multiple rounds of discussions and reached important consensus on expanding and deepening cooperation in architecture and construction fields. Jin expressed the hope that the two sides could accelerate the implementation of educational cooperation projects and work together to create a high-level education and research cooperation platform. Subsequently, both parties had in-depth discussions on the cooperation plan and work progress.
The delegation conducted field research to the Laboratory for Material Testing, LaborA, MaBa. SAPERLab, accompanied by laboratory responsible personnels Roberto Minerva, Cecilia Bolognesi, and Ingrid Paoletti. During the visit to LaborA, President Jin Donghan was invited to write down his vision on the cooperation between the two universities.
President Jin Donghan and the university delegation also visited the Polihub incubator. Chiara Lettieri, as the responsible personnel of the Polihub presented a brief introduction about the facility’s vision, goals, management structures, and daily operation. He noted that the incubator provides services in law, tax, patent, technology, investment, market, and other aspects, aiming to find suitable business models for startups and reduce enterprise risks. With the help of the Polihub, a total of 122 companies were incubated in 2022.
Prof. Jin Donghan accordingly introduced Tianjin University’s innovation and entrepreneurship education and its achievements in technology transfer, especially in the case of building TJU-NKU Higher Education Science and Technology Park. He invited Polihub to actively participate in the China International College Student’s “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition to be hosted by TJU this year. Both sides agreed to further deepen contact and cooperation on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Italian Politecnico di Milano is a member of the IDEA alliance of top engineering colleges in Europe. According to the 2023 QS World University Discipline Ranking, Italian Politecnico di Milano ranks 10th in architecture and 12th in civil engineering worldwide. In recent years, Tianjin University has conducted multi-level educational and scientific research cooperation with Italian Politecnico di Milano in the architecture field. PolyHub, an innovation and entrepreneurship incubation platform under the Italian Politecnico di Milano, was founded in 2000. It is the third largest university incubator around the world, with an incubation area of 7700 square meters. PoliHub supports the creation of new enterprises through providing legal, financial, and strategic services for potential entrepreneurs during the start-up phase.
By Zhang Yiru
Editor: Eva Yin
