HKUST Annual Report 2016-17

37 on-going on expanding this program. The University signed an agreement with the University of Waterloo, allowing students from various disciplines to earn a dual PhD from both institutions, and established a partnership to enable students to earn a Bachelor degree from HKUST’s School of Engineering and a Postgraduate law degree from the University of Exeter. Senior management also visited the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO in Russia and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with HKUST, in the presence of Russian Federation Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, to collaborate on academic exchange, executive programs and research. The University’s strategic partnership agreement with KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, established in 2015, successfully fostered joint research in areas including big data systems and robotics. As a result, the University currently has nine strategic partnerships with elite universities. The other institutions are University of Minnesota, Rice University, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Technische Universität München and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Engaging in Global Dialogue President Chan was invited for the fifth time to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2017. He also attended the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), an elite platform comprising over 25 research university leaders, where he shared his views on the “Fourth Industrial Revolution Governance – Priorities, Objectives and Role of Universities”. HKUST was invited to co-design a workshop at the 11th Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, in June 2017. At the workshop, titled “The New Drone Economy with The Hong Kong University Science and Technology”, three HKUST faculty along with experts from Airbus Defence and Space, International Civil Aviation Organization, and Imperial College London, shared opportunities and challenges for engineers, business leaders and policy-makers to realize the full commercial potential of drones. The University remains actively engaged with peers in other key regional and international networks. HKUST senior management team regularly contributes to global dialogue on higher education through organizations such as the Association of East Asian Research Universities (AEARU) and Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU). In May 2017, the University joined the Third APRU Vice Presidents for Research Meeting 2017, hosted by Nanjing University. Themed “Enhancing the Role of Universities in Fueling Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for participating universities to share best practices and their experience across geographic and cultural borders. In June 2017, HKUST participated in the XI Glion Colloquium, where research university leaders join leaders from business and government to consider the role that the world’s foremost universities should play in addressing the challenges and opportunities of today’s world.