High-end forum on interdisciplinary cooperation held in Xi'an

The Second Science & Technology, Humanities and Society High-end Forum on Interdisciplinary Cooperation and Blending of Major Issues in the New Era was held on May 17th in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province in Northwest China, aiming to promote economic and social development.

The forum speakers in exchange with participants. [Photo/Lu Hongyan]

Sponsored by Xi’an Jiaotong University, one of China’s top schools, the forum attracted more than 150 teachers and students from different disciplines of science, technology, culture and medicine.

Zhang Maizeng, Party secretary of Xi'an Jiaotong University, said at the forum that the development of society needs cross-integrated disciplinary follow-up services. Interdisciplinary integration, breaking down of respective boundaries and promotion of discipline inter-penetration will certainly form new schools to meet the needs of science, technology, society and culture, and will certainly make greater contributions to the promotion of economic and social development.

"I hope that through the forum, more scholars can be inspired to inject new vision and vitality into the development of disciplines with more consciousness and greater strength, and constantly innovate the new realm of disciplines development," said Zhang.

In her report, Wang Ying, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of Nanjing University, emphasized the importance of recognizing nature, abiding by natural laws and adjusting the relationship between man and nature to make sustainable development possible.

Zheng Nanning, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robots at Xi'an Jiaotong University, discussed how to deal with the challenges arising from the new generation of artificial intelligence from the cross-integration perspective of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Wu Junjie, a young Yangtze River scholar at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, proposed that in recent years, with the emergence of big data in various application fields, researchers can extract entity multi-dimensional behavior information from heterogeneous data such as spatio-temporal sequence, interconnection networks and user generated content, and describe, understand and predict individual and group behavior through intelligent modeling, which opens the door for behavioral calculation.

After the keynote report, on-site teachers and students interacted enthusiastically with the three keynote speakers about interdisciplinary project research, innovative exploration in social sciences, exploring the laws of social problems, whether there are methods and techniques to follow, and how to define the necessary and sufficient conditions of artificial intelligence.

According to Xi Guang, vice-president of Xi'an Jiaotong University, the forum is a high-level interdisciplinary discussion and dialogue based on the "Interdisciplinary Forum for Young Teachers" held every two weeks by the school. It aims to explore interdisciplinary cooperation and integration on major issues such as national development and social progress, and to discover and seize the commanding heights of new disciplinary growth.