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About the Lab
 In
order to strengthen the scientific cooperation between the People's
Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom (UK), the Huazhong
University of Science and Technology (HUST) under the Ministry of
Education (MoE) of the PRC and Rothamsted Research (RRes), sponsored by
the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) of the
UK, established a Joint Laboratory at HUST in Wuhan, China on
14th December 2000. This is the First Joint Laboratory between
China and the UK and its name is the China-UK
HUST-RRes Crop Genetic Engineering and Genomics Joint Laboratory. HUST
President Professor Mingwu FAN and the Associate Director of RRes
Professor Peter SHEWRY co-chaired the Lab open ceremony on 22nd
August 2001. The mission of this Laboratory is to improve the end use
quality, resistance to biotic and abiotic stress and yield of crops by
biotechnology, to develop crop functional genomics, and to establish an
international training centre for young scientists in the areas of plant
biotechnology and plant science in Wuhan, China between Institutions in China and UK.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST)
The new HUST, a combination of
former HUST, Tongji Medical University, Wuhan Urban Construction Institute
and Wuhan Science &
Technology Vocational College on May 26th
2000, is a key university directly
under the leadership of the Ministry of Education. The administrative
structure involves the integration of management from the Ministry of
Education, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Construction and
Ministry of Science and Technology as well as management from the Hubei
Provincial Government. The
University ranks top of the Chinese leading universities in comprehensive
strength. The new organization
brings an extensive and more balanced structure of academic disciplines.
Until
August 2003, there were eleven faculties: philosophy, economics, law,
education, literature, history, agriculture, science, engineering,
medicine and management. The University offers a variety of programs,
including 69
undergraduate programs,
200
Master’s programs,
139
doctoral programs
and 17
post-doctoral research centers. It has 15 national
key disciplines.
A number of other leading research centers are located here;
4
National Engineering Research Centers, 3 National Leading Laboratories, 2
National Specialized
Laboratories.
The University has more than 10,000
faculty members, of whom over 4,000
are full-time teachers, 9 are
full academicians and 5 are
part-time academicians of the
Chinese Academy
of Sciences & the Chinese Academy
of Engineering, over 900
are full professors. The resident students number over
60,000
of whom more than 10,000
are graduate students.
Rothamsted Research (RRes)
Rothamsted Research is a world leading research center with high quality scientific
research relevant to plant-based agriculture with the objective of
achieving improvements in rural and agricultural economies. It is one of
eight institutes sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council of the UK
and comprises
two major sites which together form the largest land-based institute in
the UK
and the oldest in the world: Rothamsted (Patron: Her Majesty the Queen)
and Broom's Barn. The institute has four experimental farms and a field
station, the scientific programme of which is run jointly with
ADAS.
There are strong formal links with the Universities of Nottingham and
Reading.
Thus, many of the scientific staff nominally hold university posts and
contribute to teaching programmes.
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