JI hosts Entrepreneurship Week

Entrepreneurship Week 2018 was successfully held at Long Bin Building of University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI) from September 4 to September 7. Co-organized by JI’s Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) and SJTU’s School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the four-day event attracted 120 attendees from 14 countries.

SJTU Vice President Weiming Wang delivered an opening speech.

In his opening address, SJTU Vice President Weiming Wang praised JI for setting up the stage bringing the university’s three most important entrepreneurial forces together, namely, School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, neoBay and CFE. He said SJTU boasts a very good history and tradition of entrepreneurship and innovation. The spirit of entrepreneurship on campus originates from the university founder Xuanhuai Sheng who proposed a philosophy of “saving the nation with enterprises, empowering the nation with education”.

CFE’s Chief Advisor, FengHe Group Founder and Chairman John Wu, also sent his congratulation message for the opening ceremony via a pre-arranged video from the United States. The ceremony held on the morning of September 4 also included keynote speeches by Chairman of IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society Michael Condry, and CEO of AInnovation Hocking Xu.

Entrepreneurship Week 2018 highlighted two main topics of technology commercialization and technology-based social entrepreneurship. The speakers included academics from SJTU as well as other universities from home and abroad such as Guangxi University (China), South China University of Technology (China), Sydney Business School (Australia), Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), Kyushu University (Japan), Westerdals (Norway) and Asia Institute of Technology (Thailand), as well as experts from technology companies such as Intel, GM, GE, Medvance, CyberInsight, Xiaopeng, YITU, AnyHelper, RealGlobe (Japan), and Grameen Shakti (Bangladesh), and practitioners at hospitals and NGOs such as Renji Hopital (China), Redcross (Japan), and Mukti (India).

Liang Chen, CTO of Medvance, demonstrates the newest medical technology

JI alumni Zhongchang Liu, CTO of CyberInsight and Siyuan Sun, CTO and Cofounder of Bunwen.AI, and another alumnus of SJTU Jianyu Chen were among the speakers on technology commercialization. They also held a special interactive session with current students on the topic of entrepreneurship as career.

Alumni and Students

In addition to attending seminars, participants were also taken to two incubators and a makerspace in Shanghai including neoBay, FirstBuild and HC Club. At neoBay Prof. Zhigang Zhang, CEO of neoBay Venture Captial personally gave a tour and explained its operation and HC Club invited government officials and lawyers to explain policies to promote foreign entrepreneurship in Shanghai. They also visited Shanghai International Institute of Design and Innovation for a workshop on design thinking for social change.

Group Photo at neoBay

Workshop at Shanghai International Institute of Design and Innovation

Entrepreneurship Week 2018 ended successfully on September 7, winning praises from attendees and generating fruitful results. The event led to five concrete research projects aiming at visible social impacts among the Belt and Road countries using mHealth technology: 1) Robots for Elderly, 2) Drones for Disaster Management, 3) Portable Health Clinic, 4) Blockchain for Social Business, and 5) mHealth for Parkinson’s disease. As a collaborative umbrella project, CFE will lead a multi-disciplinary team composed of SJTU students under Global Engagement Initiative of SJTU to seek ways to maximize social impacts in Bangladesh in January 2019. Yunus Centre for Social Business atAsia Institute of Technology has volunteered to hold next event in Thailand to carry on this new tradition.

Group Photo for participants of mHealth for Belt and Road Project