“Basic research is fully supported by national investment, but applied research calls for engagement of more enterprises.” This was a recent remark of Prof. Bao Xinhe, NPC member, USTC president and CAS academician at an interview by the journalist of China Enterprise News, who insisted that such a development approach of integration and mutual progress of technologies and enterprises is well reflected by many universities and research institutes including USTC, as a good example, iFLYTEK has not only come out, but also stood out.
In the interview, Prof. Bao first quoted the Report on the Work of the Government delivered by Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council, which underlined the necessity of improving technical supporting capacity and strengthening original innovation, “for researchers like us, this places great confidence to innovation-driven technical development, and strongly supports extension of technical achievements from ‘lab’ to ‘application field’.”
Underdeveloped intermediary market in the process of commercialization of technical achievements, numerous internal restrictions of some research institutes in China etc. give rise to the problem of lagged implementation of policies on transformation of technical achievements. Bao suggested that we ought to accelerate cultivating a squad of intermediary agencies familiarizing technical policies and industrial development for this mission, and enhance awareness rate of such policies in diverse forms and understand where congestion points are, to open “the last mile” toward transformation of technical achievements.
Innovation is the gene of USTC, Bao said, that during the period from the end of December 2018 to February 2019, the faculties of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have published five papers on top-level journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. “We should not merely value academic papers, but we encourage publication of innovative high-level works like these covering the fields of science, chemistry, geo-space and medicine etc., which also reflected the dynamics of USTC in numerous fields of original basic research.”
“Over the past year, we’ve started to establish such system for transformation of technical achievements gradually in several cities having strong demand in this respect in Anhui, such as Wuhu, Bengbu, Fuyang and Tongling.” Presented to the journalist of China Enterprise News, Bao told his proposal on building the system for transformation of technical achievements at the 13^th National People's Congress of PRC held in 2018. So far, USTC has initially established technology transfer centers in above cities and stationed researchers at these facilities. He hoped that not only the technical achievements of USTC, but also those by other research institutes of CAS, should be directly made available to the users.
Bao presented that, “the future objective of USTC is to establish a system of scientific and technological innovation based in Hefei, covering Anhui and oriented to China, relying upon the Institute of Advanced Technology of USTC. In other words, we should directly deliver technical achievements of USTC to the regions in need, and that various cities will participate in the construction of technology transfer centers, to co-construct such an organization for transfer and transformation of achievements.”
Another long concern of Bao is about the way of USTC by which more groups are covered by superior resources of basic education and more students having access to high-quality education in the course of building “a world-class university and first-class disciplines”. He said that USTC is cooperating with the Department of Education of Anhui Province in the study of spreading USTC’s achievements in basic education to weak areas in terms of education crews by means of building intelligent schools and through “Internet⁺” channels around the province.
It’s reported that Department of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China was established and Anhui Provincial Hospital became the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC at the end of 2017, marking the substantial step of USTC toward operating medical institution.