The Chinese Ambassador to the UK visited Imperial College last week to discover more about Imperial and also gave a lecture on the role of innovation as the path to success in twenty first century China. Xiaoming Liu has been the Ambassador for China since 2009 and took the time to talk to Chinese staff and students to find out more about their experiences at the college.

Mr Liu was given a tour of the Imperial incubator and was introduced to researchers who have worked in collaboration with China. Some of these researchers included Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute, who is a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Yike Guo from the Department of Computing who established a joint laboratory of scientific informatics between Imperial and Tsinghua University in 2007.

The Ambassador and his wife, Mme HU Pingua, have been visiting other universities around England. When speaking about Imperial, the Ambassador stated: “Imperial College London is the last of the G5 elite universities in Britain I have visited, however people in Britain often say ‘last but not least’ and my visit to Imperial today is rightly described in this way. Your university matches any of the other four – Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and UCL and your reputation, strengths and innovations are much admired worldwide.”