On April 6 and 7, SUSTech was the venue for the 2018 Annual Meeting of Human Imagination Research with over 30 attendees, including President Chen Shiyi and SUSTech professors from a variety of academic fields. Other attendees included academicians and creatives from universities nationwide, research institutes and innovative enterprises. The theme of the annual meeting was “In Search of the Source of Imagination,” which inspired a lot of spirited discussion throughout the two-day forum.

Han Qide, who is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Honorary President of China Association for Science and Technology, and the Dean of Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, was the guest of honor. He acknowledged the significance of the meeting and offered rich insights on the following topics: the definition of imagination; research methods for human imagination; and relationships among imagination, innovation, education development, and powerful nation of science and technology.

The Research Center for Science and Human Imagination at SUSTech Humanities Center organized the meeting. This Research Center mainly focuses on three academic fields: human imagination development, future prediction, and creativity in popular science and science fiction. Currently, the research center is studying imagination and brain cognition, innovation and creativity in science fiction, and the industrialization of Chinese science fiction.

Next semester, the center will provide additional courses including “Imagination and Its Development” on top of existing ones such as “Science Fiction: From Novels to Movies” “Research methods in Futurology” and “Creative Writing for Science Fiction.” There will also be an award ceremony called “The Most Imaginative Person of 2018”.