The Chinese ambassador Xiao Junzheng, accompanied by 1st Secretary for Research and Technology Ms Zhang Dong and Embassy officials, visited the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion on 7th April. The Ambassador expressed his appreciation of the high level of research being carried out at the institution.

The Ambassador and his colleagues met the Director of FORTH, Professor Nektarios Tavernarakis, directors of the Foundation’s Institutes and specialist units and researchers, and received an extensive briefing on FORTH’s activities and its existing and future cooperation projects with research establishments in China.

The Ambassador in his turn described recent scientific developments in China and presented data on the country’s investment in research, patents, publications and high-technology enterprises, as well as on funded research programmes and on China’s most notable research achievements in recent years.

The Chinese delegation was then briefed on the training of Chinese doctoral and post-doctoral candidates who had studied at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) and are now lecturers and researchers in China, as well as the long-term cooperation between FORTH and Chinese academic and research institutes.

There were also briefings on progress at the Belt and Road Joint Laboratory on Cultural Heritage Conservation Technology, and the collaboration between the IESL and the Chengdu Optics and Electronics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as the “Water to hydrogen” project which was funded through the Greek-Chinese research cooperation programme.

The Ambassador was then informed about the organisation of the 19th International Congress on Rheology which this year is taking place in Athens, with significant participation by Chinese institutions. Greece will be contributing to the next conference which will take place in China in 2027.

There was also a presentation by the Centre for Cultural Informatics of the Institute of Computer Science, which is following an interdisciplinary approach in support of the life cycle of cultural informatics and its documentation processes, facilitating the study, preservation and promotion of cultural heritage.

The Centre for Cultural Informatics acts as a responsible authority for the international standard CIDOC CRM (Conceptual Reference Model) (ISO21127), which is a theoretical and practical tool for information integration in the field of cultural heritage. The Centre has made a critical contribution to the creation and dissemination of the standard. The Chinese National Cultural Heritage Administration, which is part of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, adopted CIDOC CRM as a national standard in 2019.

The delegation also visited research labs at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, and were were given a tour by the teams for Photonics Applications in Cultural Heritage, and Transparent Conductive Materials and Devices.

They also visited the Ultrafast Laser Micro- and Nano-processing laboratory and the IESL spin-off company Biomimetic which is based at the Science and Technology Park of Crete in Heraklion. The Park was created as a FORTH initiative in 1993.

There followed guided tours of the Molecular Entomology – Green Biotechnology laboratory of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, which carries out ultra-high resolution microscopy and is the only one of its kind in Greece, and of the premises of the Ambient Intelligence Programme of the Institute of Computer Science.

The Ambassador expressed his enthusiasm at the high level of research being carried out at FORTH, saying that he hoped for a strengthening of mutual relations and collaborations, with the funding of joint research projects.