Michael Pecht, UM Establish Relationship with the Chinese Research Community

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From left to right: Mr. Sun, General Manager of Suzhou High Speed Railway Company; Mr. Wang, President of Suzhou High Speed Railway Company; Mr. Jiang, Vice-Mayor of Suzhou Xiangcheng District; Dr. Mote, President of University of Maryland; Dr. Pines, Dean of Clark School of Engineering at University of Maryland; and Dr. Pecht, Director of CALCE.

The Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) and the University of Maryland are strategic partners in a groundbreaking effort to develop an International University Research Park in the Chinese city of Suzhou, near Shanghai. University of Maryland President C. D. Mote Jr., Clark School of Engineering Dean Darryll Pines, and CALCE Director Michael Pecht recently met with high-level officials from the Suzhou High Speed Railway Company and the Suzhou Xiangcheng District to finalize plans.

The aim of the Suzhou International University Research Park is to foster cooperative research between Chinese, European, and American researchers in a wide variety of areas. Their strategic planning partner is Kotler Marketing Group in the U.S. and China, working in collaboration with the Battelle Institute, CannonDesign, and Lee and Associates. Plans include an organ transplant hospital, a personalized medicine program, and engineering research centers, including a major center focused on failure analysis and prognostics and health management (PHM) of electronics.

The Suzhou research center for failure analysis and PHM will be guided by CALCE, the University of Maryland, and their Chinese counterparts. Together they will establish a world-class failure analysis and safety modeling laboratory that will be a Center of Excellence in China. This center will bring great benefit to the entire international electronics industry as it develops new techniques and technologies to make virtually all electronic systems safer and more reliable.

Suzhou, a city of nearly 6 million located about 50 miles west of Shanghai, is a strategic place for CALCE and the University of Maryland to establish a cooperative research center. Suzhou boasts the presence of over one hundred Fortune 500 companies, including many of the world’s largest electronics companies, which account for over US$100 billion in exports from Suzhou each year.

Through collaborative efforts such as the Suzhou International University Research Park, the University of Maryland and CALCE are leading the way in establishing strong synergistic relationships with the Chinese research community.

Published July 12, 2010