"The new Sars Fang Centre is top priority for OUC and its future relationship with UiB Declared OUC President Zhigang Yu."

As part of the cooperation plans between the University of Bergen (UiB) and the Ocean University of China (OUC), a visit of UiB was organized and the OUC delegation spent two hours at the Sars Centre. It comprised the OUC President, the Dean of Marine Life Sciences, the Deputy Director of OUC international affairs, as well as two faculty members. One of them was Pr Bo Dong who worked during five years at the Sars Centre, as postdoc in Di Jiang’s group (2006-2010).

One motivation underlying this visit is the establishment of the Sars Fang Centre for Evolutionary and Developmental Biology at OUC. As this new Centre aims to be similar to the Sars Centre in its scientific scope and model of management, the OUC President wished to see for himself the Sars Centre at UiB and meet all Sars Centre group leaders. The delegation showed strong interest in short and very efficient presentations from all group leaders (thanks to them!), and could realize the importance of building very good animal facilities, that distinguish the Sars Centre from many other institutes around the world. It was very interesting to see how a University Leadership can show so much attention to concrete scientific matters. It was even difficult to make the OUC President quit observing Oikopleura in its aquaria.

In a meeting the same evening at Museplass, in presence of the UiB rector, the progress of Sars Fang Centre establishment was reported. Other topics involving UiB and OUC were also addressed. The OUC President expressed unambiguously that the Sars Fang Centre is a top priority for his university and also for its future cooperation with UiB. This is an excellent signal for the Sars Fang Centre and its future group leaders, but also for the Sars Centre as an inspiring model and strong contributor of this collaboration. The first group leader candidates will be interviewed on 25-27 November in Qingdao by the newly formed international scientific advisory committee.