On May 14, a meeting was held to launch the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center, which was led by Sichuan University, in Jinjiang Hotel, Chengdu. The attendees included Xiaogang Deng, deputy secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee; Fengchao Wang, deputy governor; Yanrong Li, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the president of Sichuan University; Anmin Li, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Sichuan University; Zongben Xu, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Xi'an Jiaotong University; Liangyin Chu, vice president of Sichuan University, and other leaders of Sichuan provincial government and relevant work units of Chengdu. Fengchao Wang presided over the meeting and Xiaogang Deng delivered an important speech.

At the meeting, Dong Liu, director of the Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Department, announced the decision of the general office of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the officers of the management committee and academic committee of the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center. Yanrong Li was appointed the director of the management committee of the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center; Anmin Li and Liangyin Chu, among others, were deputy directors. Professor Maokang Luo was appointed the director of the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center.

Yanrong Li spoke as the representative of Sichuan University. First of all, he thanked the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee and the provincial government for their support and congratulated the center on its official start-up. He pointed out that mathematics is not only the important foundation of natural science, but also the key to major technological innovation. The establishment of the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center is an important measure for Sichuan Province to comprehensively reinforce the original research "from 0 to 1". The center will always concentrate on the major needs of the country, emphasize the industrial application orientation, and center its work on key mathematical issues in the fields of the information technology and artificial intelligence of the new generation, equipment manufacturing, new energy industry, biomedicine and financial law. Therefore, it will build three platforms. The first one is the“Mathematics and Application” coordination platform, which is to promote the exchange and cooperation between mathematics science and mathematics application. The second is the “Mathematics-for- Application” platform. This platform is to solve a number of mathematics problems in the national major science and technology strategies as well as regional and enterprise development. The third is the “Mathematics into Application” platform. This platform is a platform to develop ways of application in order to apply mathematics in engineering projects and industrialize mathematical research findings.Being the leader of the center, Sichuan University has the confidence in developing this center into an important base for the applied mathematics research, the training of high-level mathematics talent and the high-level academic exchange.

Xiaogang Deng, Fengchao Wang, Yanrong Li and Zongben Xu inaugurated together the Sichuan National Applied Mathematics Center

Sichuan University is one of the earliest comprehensive universities with the largest number of academic subjects in China. It is also one of the first universities for mathematical research and talent training in China. As early as 124 years ago, when the predecessor of Sichuan University, Sichuan School of Chinese and Western Studies, was founded, it established the "arithmetic hall", which trained and gathered a large number of well-known mathematicians including Shizhen Wei, Zhao Ke, Daren Wu, Yingming Liu, and Anmin Li, etc. The University attaches great importance to and strongly supports the development of mathematics. It has launched the science improvement plan, and invested 20 million yuan annually to support the original basic research, high-end international cooperation and new characteristics, including mathematics.