Through the opening of the new institute TU Delft hopes to increase its chances for structural cooperation with Chinese companies and universities. In the realization of the foundation there was collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Science.

The TU/e Executive Board informs us through its spokesman Peter van Dam that it does not intend to follow the Delft competitors. “We already do have our own man in the Shanghai region who acts as an outpost to establish contacts with Chinese universities.”

And there are more contacts with China: for one, the Biomedical Engineering Department is closely involved with the Northeastern University in Shenyang, where it has assisted in the establishment of a similar program; prof.dr.ir. Jos Brouwers of Architecture, Building and Planning is visiting professor at Wuhan University of Technology, and retired prof.dr ir. Jeu Schouten (ID) is helping to set up a design institute in the province of Zhejiang.

Still, there is a bigger flow of academics from China to the Netherlands than vice versa. Research conducted by the newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ shows that more than two thousand Chinese students are studying in the Netherlands this year and there are almost a thousand scientists and PhD candidates working at Dutch universities. TU/e turns out to be among the institutes with the sharpest increase: within five years the number of students has grown from 80 to 143. At present TU/e employs 155 Chinese researchers (including PhD candidates). Delft is the university that employs the largest number of Chinese researchers: over four hundred. (TJ)