Honorary Chairman of CAE met with Prof. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States in CAE office building in Beijing on May 27, 2011. Xu first of all reviewed the fruitful cooperative efforts made by both Academies in recent years, and then made concrete suggestions about future cooperation. He pointed out that, “China-America Frontier of Engineering Symposium” which were held in 2009 and 2011 respectively worked out well and proved to be quite successful, thus more efforts should be made in this area in the future, attracting more young science and technology personnel to get actively participated in. Also, the NAE-CAE Joint Workshop on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which just came to a close in Shanghai, turned out to be a great success. Therefore, annual workshop can be organized in the same manner in both countries in the future. Besides, Xu said, CAE will be actively involved in cooperative projects carried out by the four Academies (CAE, CAS, NAE, NAS) in both China and the USA, “smart grid” project in particular, hoping to build an effective mechanism for communication and exchanges among the four Academies, so as to ensure the successful implementation of those projects. 

President Vest extended approval for Xu’s comments and suggestions, who then suggested that cooperation should be further strengthened in the field of “synthetic biology” among Academies of Sciences and Academies of Engineering in China, USA and UK. President Vest then introduced the “Grand Challenges of the 21 Century” research project which NAE is conducting, hoping to collaborate with CAE in addressing the “grand challenges”. He also suggested that Academies of Engineering in China, USA and UK should work together to schedule a two-hour long-distance video conference, discussing and exchanging viewpoints as to how to strengthen international cooperation in issues like responding to future challenges, improving engineering education quality, as well as enhancing the public, esp. the young generation’s understanding and awareness of engineering science and technology, on the basis of seminars themed on “Grand Challenges” held in three countries respectively in advance. Xu said CAE would react positively to NAE’s motion. 

Present also in the meeting were CAE President Zhou Ji, CAE Executive Vice President Pan Yunhe, CAE Member Wang Dianzuo, NAE Executive Officer Lance Davis, as well as NAE Project Department Director Dr. Proctor Reid. (By Guan Jian, June 2011; translated by Liu Chang)