Written by Jack Zhou, Education, British Council China

Building on the successful inspection trip to the UK by Wuxi science & technology delegation in May 2012, as the second phase of this joint collaboration programme, the UK-Wuxi Technology Transfer Conference took place from 8 to 9 November 2012 in Wuxi, which attracted more than 200 representatives from universities in the UK and enterprises located in Wuxi Municipality, and this conference turned out to be a great success.

The programme aims to link up UK excellence in researches and technologies with the needs of Wuxi-based enterprises with an ultimate aim to transfer the technology from UK universities to Wuxi on a commercial basis, and as well as to expand such kinds of collaborations to surrounding cities of Wuxi, which have similar interests and environment.

The collaboration project was jointly developed by the British Council and Wuxi Association for Science & Technology (WAST) and it falls in Knowledge Economy Partnership strand of IHE programme, British Council's global initiative on higher education work, which is aimed at providing a platform and framework for the creation of sustainable, multilateral partnerships that link the higher education sector, government and business communities to drive forward global, regional and national knowledge economies.