The Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Mr. Xiao Junzheng, visited FORTH on Friday, April 7, 2023, accompanied by Ms. Zhang Dong, First Secretary of Research and Technology and other Embassy officials. The Ambassador and his associates met with the President of FORTH, Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis, Directors of FORTH’s Institutes and Units, and researchers, and were informed extensively about the Foundation’s activities, as well as the existing and future collaborations with foundations and entities in China.

The Ambassador presented China’s recent scientific data and information on the country’s investment on research, patents, publications and high-tech enterprises. He also talked about China’s funded research programs and their top research achievements in recent years.

This was followed by an update on the training of PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows from China at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL), who are now professors or researchers in China, and about the long-term cooperation of IESL with Academic and Research Institutions in China. There were also presentations on the progress of the joint Research Laboratory with the Palace Museum of the Forbidden City (Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Cultural Heritage Conservation Technology), the cooperation between IESL and the Chengdu Optics and Electronics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, within the framework of the relative Memorandum of Cooperation, as well as the results of the “Water to Hydrogen” project funded within the Greece-China research cooperation program. The Ambassador was then informed about the organization of the 19^th International Conference on Pheology which is being organized this year in Athens with significant participation from Chinese Institutions, but also about the next Conference to be held in China in 2027 with significant Greek participation.

This was also followed by a presentation of the Centre for Cultural Informatics (CCI) of the Institute of Computer Science, which pursues a cross-disciplinary approach to supporting the entire life cycle of cultural information and documentation procedures, for the benefit of study, preservation and promotion of cultural heritage. The Centre for Cultural Informatics operates as a competent centre for the international standard CIDOC CRM (ISO 21127), a Conceptual Reference Model (ontology) in the field of cultural heritage, having contributed decisively to its creation, development and dissemination. The Chinese Government’s National Administration of Cultural Heritage, under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, accepted the CRM as a national standard GB/T 37965-2019 on 30/08/2019 and a new translation into Mandarin was completed last year.

The Ambassador expressed his enthusiasm for the high level of research conducted at the Foundation. During the discussion that followed, the mutual desire to strengthen relations and research collaborations, by funding joint research projects, was communicated by both sides.

The Ambassador and the members of the mission visited research laboratories of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) and were given a guided tour by the “Photonics for Cultural Heritage” Group and the “Transparent Conductive Materials and Devices” Group. They also visited the “Ultrafast Laser Micro-Nano processing” Laboratory and the IESL spin-off company “Biomimetic” based in the Science and Technology Park of Crete. This was followed by a tour of the Molecular Entomology-Green Biotechnology Laboratory and the - unique in Greece - ultra-high resolution microscopy infrastructure at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, as well as the facilities of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Programme of the Institute of Computer Science.