Upon the invitation of Southwest University, Prof. M. Bagher Owlia, the Director of International Relations Office of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences; Dr. Ghasem Barid Loghmani, the President of Yazd University, and Dr. M. Ali Haddad, the Director of International Collaborations of Yazd University had an academic visit to China and Southwest University on January 6 to 9, 2020. In this regard, a meeting was held on January 6th in the International College of SWU attended by the Iranian delegation and SWU officials where the universities were presented and mutual interests and common grounds were discussed to expand academic collaborations.
The delegation then visited the Center for Iranian Studies of Southwest University in the company of the director of the center, Prof. Ji Kaiyun who expressed appreciation for the fruitful results of this event. Also they had a visit from the Colleges of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Mathematics, Geography, Physics, Environment, and Climatology as well as the University laboratories.
As a progressive move, an MoU was signed between SWU and SSU which calls for student/faculty exchange, exchange of information, academic materials and publications, joint research and education programs, and joint and co-hosted conferences. It is worth mentioning that Yazd University had signed an MoU with SWU the previous year.
SWU is located in Chongqing, a megacity in southwest China and one of the four municipalities of People’s Republic of China. Chongqing is the most populous Chinese municipality with a population of over 30 million. SWU is a national, comprehensive university under the administration of the Ministry of Education including over 50,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as 1,400 international students from 70 countries and regions.