Focusing on the Frontiers, Stirring Ideas — Sun Yat-sen University School of Medicine Successfully Holds Academic Festival Closing Ceremony and Faculty Assembly
The 17th Academic Festival of Sun Yat-sen University School of Medicine was grandly held from November 23 to November 30, 2025. As a long-standing traditional academic event of the school, the festival consistently upholds its original aspiration of "saving lives, the nation, and the world, healing diseases, bodies, and minds." By integrating a century of medical heritage with a spirit of cutting-edge innovation, it is dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and breakthroughs in scientific research, as well as shaping a development path for medical education with Chinese characteristics.
On the morning of December 1, the closing ceremony of the 17th Academic Festival and the faculty assembly of Sun Yat-sen University School of Medicine were grandly held in the Boxue Hall of the Science and Technology Building on the North Campus of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. More than 100 attendees, including members of the school’s Party and administrative leadership, faculty, staff, and student representatives, gathered to review the academic festivities and plan for future development.
**Closing Ceremony of the Academic Festival**
The closing ceremony was presided over by Vice Dean Deng Kai.
**Summary of Achievements: The 17th Academic Festival**
Dean Kuang Ming systematically summarized the achievements of this year’s Academic Festival. With the theme "AI Empowerment and Interdisciplinary Innovation," the festival featured 20 series of events, including the Medical Frontier Forum, forums from eight major departments, alumni and young scholar sessions, and industry-academia-research exchanges. The events attracted over 2,380 on-site participants and invited more than a hundred experts and scholars from home and abroad, including six academicians, to deliver 146 specialized reports. These activities fully demonstrated the school’s academic vitality and brand influence.
**Honors and Recognition: The 17th Academic Festival**
Following evaluations by an expert panel, first, second, and third prizes, along with several excellence awards, were awarded for the Young Academic Award and the Experimental Technology Award. Vice Dean Deng Kai announced the list of winners during the ceremony, and school leaders and experts presented certificates to the awardees in recognition of the innovative contributions of young researchers and technical support teams.
After the award ceremony, the faculty assembly commenced, chaired by Party Secretary Hao Yajuan.
**Work Arrangements: The 17th Academic Festival**
The meeting first conveyed the feedback from the expert panel of the Ministry of Education’s Clinical Medicine Program Accreditation. Vice Dean Guo Kaihua provided a detailed report on the suggestions and feedback from the accreditation experts, emphasizing the importance of using evaluation to promote construction, reform, and improvement, integrating evaluation with development efforts, and fostering high-quality, connotative development.
Assistant Dean Pan Chaoyun highlighted key points regarding laboratory safety management. He emphasized that Principal Investigators (PIs) are the primary responsible persons for laboratory safety and must include safety topics in weekly group meetings. He specifically noted that raising animals in laboratories is strictly prohibited and drew attention to electrical safety. Additionally, he called for maintaining clean and tidy laboratory environments, promptly disposing of experimental waste and garbage, and collectively fostering a safe, standardized, and supportive research environment.
Vice Dean Zhou Jiaguo reported on the progress of the school’s annual research work, showcasing the school’s steady achievements in research funding, project applications, and academic publications.
Dean Kuang Ming delivered concluding remarks. From the perspective of the school’s development and historical responsibilities, he reiterated the significance of clinical program accreditation and laboratory safety. He emphasized that in the face of the rapid advancements in science and technology, faculty members should actively consider how to improve the quality of medical education, strengthen the guiding role of basic research, and adapt to transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence. He called on all colleagues to pool their wisdom and contribute ideas and efforts to the school’s development over the next decade.
**Frontier Insights: The 17th Academic Festival**
Professor Liu Xianguo was invited to deliver a special report titled "Innovative Reform and Practice in Disruptive Technologies." In an accessible manner, Professor Liu elaborated on the national strategic layout for disruptive technologies, the logic of project selection, and dynamic support mechanisms. He emphasized the importance of addressing major clinical needs as the guiding principle and encouraged researchers to break conventions and explore transformative technological pathways. An interactive Q&A session followed the report, creating a lively atmosphere of engagement.
The successful hosting of this Academic Festival not only showcased Sun Yat-sen University School of Medicine’s profound academic tradition and innovative vitality but also served as a systematic review of the school’s achievements in research, teaching, and talent cultivation over the past year.
Standing at a new starting point, Sun Yat-sen University School of Medicine will continue to uphold the principle of "saving lives, the nation, and the world, healing diseases, bodies, and minds." It will closely align with national scientific and technological strategies and the development needs of the Greater Bay Area, further strengthen interdisciplinary integration, deepen reforms in education and teaching, optimize the research and innovation ecosystem, and contribute more significantly to advancing the high-quality, connotative development of the university.
