On June 21, 2016, its 25th anniversary, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) jointly presented with Times Higher Education (THE) the inaugural Asia Universities Summit, where global leaders in higher education and other sectors shared their insights into nurturing creativity and innovation. President Chen Shiyi was invited to deliver a keynote speech in the summit.

The focus of the summit was how universities nurture creativity and innovation, a vitally important issue challenging both Eastern and Western economies as they fight to maintain economic growth and social progress. President Chen Shiyi shared his observations on the focus and the advantages of emerging universities in its way to innovation. To be an innovative university, emerging universities should embark on an international path of development. It is also of great importance for these universities to attract personnel excellent in teaching and research. Moreover, emerging universities should increase investment to innovate institution and system of universities.

President Chen noted that emerging universities, with more vitality, are better to redefine their future and make a difference. For example, Shenzhen, where SUSTech located, has skyrocketed from a tiny fishing village to an international metropolis in 3 decades. In spite of remarkable achievements made in the past, there is still room and potential for Shenzhen to improve its higher education and medical care. Therefore emerging universities can redefine their future and positive influence on the development of universities, the cities, and even the higher education field in China. In addition, emerging universities enjoy higher degree of autonomy to arrange frontier disciplines, such as big data, artificial intelligence, oceanology, bioscience, robotics research, advanced manufacturing, which can inject vitality to the direction of disciplines development. Furthermore, without any historical limit, innovation can be better integrated into universities.

President Chen also explained how SUSTech nurtured innovative students and encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship. Taking personalization and internationalization as the features, SUSTech calls for undergraduates’ participation in research projects and provides faculty with one day off for consultation in enterprises every week, which was highly recognized by the experts.

Some 30 presidents from fast-rising and top universities delivered speeches in the two-day summit which was held for the first time in Asia. It was hosted by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on its Hong Kong campus.