On June 16, the Canadian ambassador to China Dominic Barton and his delegation paid a visit to Sichuan University. President Yanrong Li met with the delegation in Mingde Building of Wangjiang Campus. The Consul General and the vice consul of Canadian Consulate General in Chongqing , SCU vice presidents Shijing Yan and Lin Zhang, among others, attended the meeting.

First of all, Yanrong Li welcomed, on behalf of SCU, the Ambassador and his delegation and introduced the basic situation of SCU. He said that the ties between Sichuan University and Canada dated far back in history, and the origin of West China medicine was closely related to Canada. Sichuan University has had good cooperative relations with many Canadian universities, and the two sides have carried out extensive cooperation in student training, teacher exchange, scientific research, and so on. At present, Sichuan University is diligently working to develop West China medicine into a world-class medicine. The university is especially deepening the integration of medicine and engineering, strengthening the combination of the new generation information technology and modern medicine by focusing on research in artificial intelligence, big data, and brain science, etc. He hoped to further promote in-depth cooperation with Canada in the fields of education, science and medicine.

Ambassador Barton thanked SCU for the warm reception. He pointed out that Canada and Sichuan University have established a good cooperative relationship over the years. The two sides have carried out in-depth and close cooperation in medicine, health care, modern education and other fields. China and Canada have cooperated well in the fight against COVID-19. It was his hope that the two sides would strengthen scientific research cooperation and exchanges in the fields of health, especially brain science and artificial intelligence, so as to jointly contribute to the development of human health in the future.

Participants from both sides also talked about strengthening interaction and exchanges between Chinese and Canadian students and deepening scientific research cooperation.