George Bush China-U.S. Relations Conference
On October 22-25, the third George Bush China-U.S. Relations Conference took place in Washington, DC. This was the third in the series of biennial meetings held under the leadership of the 41st President. Former President Bush was an active participant and hosted the main banquet on Wednesday evening featuring Li Zhaoxing, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China.
Engineering was well represented. Mladen Kzeunovic from Electrical Engineering organized the Roundtable on “Electrical Energy for the 21st Century: The China-U.S. Research and Development Needs.” A paper by Warren F. Miller, Jr. from Nuclear Engineering on “The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership–The Long-Term Nuclear Research and Development Program” was featured in the joint session on “BioEnergy Development, Climate Change Mitigation, and Energy Security”. A paper from Zixiang Xiong from Electrical Engineering covered “Data Compression and Feature Extraction Research.” John Niedzwecki from Civil Engineering and the Dean’s office organized and led the “Deepwater Technology Roundtable.” Dick Ewing, TEES Research Professor, was the moderator of the forum on “The Global Transition to a Secure Energy Future” which included a paper by Christine Economides on energy sustainability and another presentation from A&M on potential joint collaboration between China and the U.S. on advanced nuclear technology. Lindsay McMullen, a senior in Biomedical Engineering, represented the Dwight Look College of Engineering as part of the group of A&M students who had an opportunity to interact with their colleagues from China who came to the conference. More information on the conference is available on the website http://china-us-conference.org/.
A very clear outcome of the meeting is that there are extraordinary opportunities for collaboration with our counterparts in China. Among the most valuable of these possibilities are for our students who might go to China for periods ranging from a few weeks to a summer internship or even longer. This would be a superb experience that would serve them well throughout their careers. I would urge everyone working with students to encourage them to explore this option. The links between China and the U.S. will play a dominant role in shaping the 21st century.
Lee