On May 28^th, Tongji SEM held an online session on Digital Empowerment and International Enterprise Innovation by Tongji’s alumni. The activity, one of the series activities of “Alumni Cloud Gathering”, was co-sponsored by German Alumni Association and British Alumni Association of Tongji University.

As keynote speakers, outstanding alumni in China, Germany and the United Kingdom gathered together and brought a knowledge feast of wisdom. The event is also one of series of activities to celebrate Tongji University’s 113^th anniversary.

Prof. SHI Qian, Deputy Dean, Prof. XIE En, Deputy Dean, and CHENG Guoping, Assistant Dean, attended the session. The three alumni invited to give the keynote speeches are Dr. HONG Zhong, CEO of the Sino-German Science and Education Park in Heidelberg, Dr. WU Yijiang, Director of Innovation Insight in the UK Innovation Department of Cisco, and PAN Xiaozhen, founder of Gold Kitchen Cupboard Company. They shared the digital development and future application trends in their respective fields.

HONG Zhong elaborated on how the traditional enterprises realized the digital transformation. Looking back at the origin and nature of the wave of industry 4.0 and digitization, he pointed out that the technological revolution constantly triggered industrial upgrades and iterations, so that the whole human society was always in a dynamic adjustment. Nowadays, the wave of digitization has swept every field of our lives, and the emerging new things challenge people’s inherent ideas, reshape people’s understanding of the existing world, and affect people’s imagination of the future world to a great extent.

WU Yijiang introduced the regulatory framework for research and innovation and the industrial strategy funds in 22 vertical markets in the UK, which provide clear policy guidance and financial support for scientific and technological innovation in the UK and are closely related to people’s lives. He also introduced the comprehensive portal of ONE4CITY one-stop smart city solution to strengthen scientific and technological innovation cooperation between China and the UK. Based on the massive database of emerging British science and technology solutions, ONE4CITY systematically presents the schemes, technologies and models of British scientific and technological innovation under the future urban framework, which plays an index and guiding role for the current cooperation in the field of scientific and technological innovation between China and the UK.

After more than 20 years of development, Gold Kitchen Cupboard becomes a professional service provider of domestic high-end integral cabinets and customized furniture, and was successfully went public in 2017. PAN Xiaozhen pointed out that from the development of the industry’s first industrial flexible customization system, Gold Kitchen Cupboard has established the GIS ecosystem of big data analysis system, GIS design system, agile supply chain system, workshop numerical control system, mobile service scheduling system and data acquisition system. He hopes that he can contribute Chinese wisdom to the digital transformation of China and even the global household industry.