The School of Information Science and Technology (SIST), Fudan University held the 2nd International Academic Assessment Meeting on October 29 – 30, 2012. The meeting invited the university’s Vice Presidents, Xiaoman CHEN and Li JIN, and other administration officers. Members of the school board and most faculty members attended the meeting as well.

SIST has established an international assessment committee to practice an effective self-administration since October, 2010. Members of the committee come from United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Hong Kong, all of whom are world widely known scholars in the field of information technology. The committee members are invited to make an assessment of the school every two years. This is the second time for SIST to hold the assessment meeting since the first in 2010. The meeting schedule involves listening to the presentations and visiting key research centers of the school. After all, assessment committee would propose an assessment report as comments to the present status and suggestions to the future development of the school.

On the first day of the meeting, Prof. Li JIN opened the meeting and expressed a warm welcome to the committee. Also, he hoped that SIST could rely on the chance to obtain more achievements and further extend international reputations. 

After Prof. JIN's welcome speech, Prof. Lirong ZHENG, Dean of SIST, provided a general presentation which reviewed the last assessment report and the progress made in these two years, including the re-organization of the school, the enhancement of the international cooperation, quality improvement of Ph.D’s education and talents recruitment. From the prospect of internationalization, Prof. Ran LIU, Dean for Internationalization of SIST, further introduced a number of joint degree programs, such as the joint master program with Royal Institute of Technology (KTH ), Sweden and the joint M.Eng and Ph.D program with Univeristy of Turku (UTU), Finland. Moreover, key research institutions of the school presented their achievements and future plans, including State Key Laboratory of ASICs and Systems, Key Laboratory of Wave Scattering and Remote Sensing Information, Engineering Research Center of Advanced Lighting Technology, Shanghai Ultra-precision Optical Manufacturing Engineering Center, Media Research Center and Center for Intelligent Medical Electronics. Assessment committee members responded their point of views on the research areas, graduate student education and interdisciplinary research platforms.

After the presentations, assessment committee visited the State Key Laboratory in Zhangjiang Campus on Oct. 29, and Key Laboratory of Wave Scattering and Remote Sensing, Engineering Research Center of Advanced Lighting Technology and Media Research Center in Handan Campus on Oct. 30 respectively. 

Prof. Bernard Weiss, the assessment committee chair, Dean of the School of Engineering and Informatics, Sussex University, United Kingdom, and Member of Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, gave the final assessment address on behalf of the committee. In the presentation, the committee highly appreciated the progress which SIST had made in the past two years, especially in the field of school re-organization, interdisciplinary center construction and enhanced international reputation. However, Prof. Weiss also pointed out some fields to be improved, for example, the cooperation among department and schools and future development strategy. At last, Prof. CHEN thanked the committee for their outstanding work, and gave a picture of some future development according to the assessment. 

The SIST International Academic Assessment Meeting ended on Oct. 30, 2012. Hopefully, it will offer a new vision of the school’s development, and a useful path to a promising future.