SUM 2012 Kickoff at USTC

STANFORD-USTC-MIT (SUM) 2012 Student Summer Camp is officially kicked off at USTC on Sept 16, 2012. The opening ceremony is held at Waterborne Lecture Hall at USTC. Forty-four students from eleven countries participate in the camp and most of them are graduate students at geophysics programs of Stanford, USTC, and MIT. Seven students from other universities are also invited to join the camp. University officials from several offices and many students at USTC also attended the opening event along with the summer camp participants (SUMers).

Prof. ZHANG Jie, Director of SUM 2012 and Director of Geophysical Research Institute, USTC, delivered an opening speech to welcome SUMers and explained the purpose of SUM and SUM activities. He said, “SUM is going to create a unique opportunity for the future leading scientists in geosciences to exchange ideas and learn from each other, and to begin collaboration from today.” Sjoerd de Ridder, a Ph.D. candidate from Stanford, on behalf visiting SUMers, expressed his appreciation for the opportunity and for the efforts made by the hosting university. Although this is his fourth trip to China, he is so excited that students from the world top universities in the same field could meet in China, making it a historical event. Prof. Robert van der Hilst, Head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, highly spoke of the significance of SUM and sincerely hoped a great success of the camp. Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) shall sponsor and co-organize with SUM on two major events during this camp. Dr. Terry Todd, Director of Global Relations, SEG, on behalf of SEG President, congratulated on the kickoff of SUM 2012, and assured that SEG would continue to support and promote education as a long term effort. Prof. LI Weiping, Associate Chairman of the USTC Steering Committee for International Cooperation, expressed the full support from the university to activities such as SUM, and he believed that the force of 1+1+1 (the sum of three universities) should be much larger than 3.

In the video clips, Prof. Gregory Beroza, Chairman of Geophysics Program at Stanford, sent his best wishes from Los Angeles where he was chairing an academic conference and regretted that he could not make the trip. Several professors at Stanford and MIT gave best wishes to SUM and said hello to USTC. These pre-recorded video tapes also introduced Stanford and MIT SUMers one by one in many unique ways.　

On the opening day, two major events attracted a lot of attention at USTC. SEG Student Challenge Bowl is a geoscience knowledge competition. This event takes place worldwide annually, but this is the first time in China. Sixteen SUMers made eight teams and joined the competition. After six rounds of competition, the team of Stanford student Rall Walsh and USTC student Jide Ogunbo won the championship, and they are going to participate in the final global competition in Las Vegas in November this year. Another event is an open dialogue between Stanford/MIT students and USTC students. Prof. Robert van der Hilst and Prof. ZHANG Jie are also invited on the stage. Discussion is frank and sincere, and topics covered student career, research, and living environments.

SUM 2012 is going to offer not only academic exchange, and also culture activities as well. It includes classes of Chinese Tea, Tai Chi, and Gong Fu. SUMers are also going to join Ping-Pong competition. A geology field trip to Yellow Mountain is going ne a highlight, followed by a few academic activities in Beijing, such as meeting with students and faculty members at Chinese Academy of Science, and China Earthquake Administration. SUMers are going to host the First International Student Geoscience Conference in Beijing, where 120 students from China will join and present technical papers.

School  of Earth and Space Sciences, USTC News Center