Tsinghua PBCSF Finance EMBA program had its overseas courses, the ‘2017 Future Technology and Business Innovation’ delivered in Boston and New Haven, USA, from July 23 to August 5, 2017. Nearly 100 finance EMBA students in two batches visited the two world top universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale University, listened to lectures by 11 famous experts and scholars on cutting-edge technological innovation and transformation of scientific and technological achievements, to learn business model innovation in the era of big data he future chances derived from the integration of China's industry and finance practice with global frontier technology. Mr. Wang Jingwei, Assistant Dean of the PBC School of Finance and Director, Center for the Finance EMBA & Executive Education Center, PBCSF, Tsinghua University led the team.
Exploring the Future of the Big Data and Digital Age
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Dean of the School of Digital Economy, MIT delivered a lecture on the Future of Digital Economy. He pointed out that, nowadays, the most important innovations are big data and artificial intelligence, and it is more economical to have machine to do what human beings is incapable of or something completely different.
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson argued that the speed of innovation has never been faster than it is now. Relevant statistics show that the productivity has grown quite smoothly, with the growth rate in the first 10 years of the 21st century exceeding that of the great 10 years of 1990s. On the other hand, the situation of middle-level workers has gone from bad to worse. This is the great paradox of the times. The income of middle-level American families and workers is both lower than that in 1997 while the employment rate is dropping sharply, which is also reflected in the global statistics of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, Director of MIT Human Dynamics Lab gave a lecture titled "Big Data, Social Physics and Management", introducing to the finance EMBA students how to use big data to improve enterprise, city and government management, as well as the management practice of data privacy protection.
Professor Pentland introduced with emphasis the social physics-an important branch of big data, and considered it as the flow of thought and information, which is the third flow aside from the material flow and the energy flow. This subject explores the evolution and change of social structure and cognitive structure brought by the thought flow, so as to construct a network model of human behavior to create operable intelligence information.
Professor Pentland also gave examples to introduce methods to enhance internal communication within an organization and to properly protect personal privacy, as well as strategies to resist network attacks. The pioneering perspectives of social physics and thought flow have broadened the finance EMBA students' thinking on improving the communication efficiency of organizations and communities.
In addition, Professor Nick Roy, MIT roboticists and Head of Google Project Wing gave a lecture on "The Future of AI and Robotics", Professor Jiwoong Shin from Yale School of Management lectured on "Brand Building in the Digital Age", and Professor Michael D. Smith from Carnegie Mellon University lectured on "The Future of Digital Entertainment", which made a comprehensive analysis of the future of the big data era and the prospective application of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Approaching to the Frontier of Advanced Medical Treatment and Life Sciences
Professor Marvin Chun, Dean of Yale Undergraduate School gave the finance EMBA students a lecture on "Mind Reading and Brain Imaging". Professor Marvin introduced the study of the relationship between human brain imaging and brain function through MRI, pointing out that the current scientific research cannot read one's mind by scanning the brain. He said the scanning of brain function connectivity could be used to analyze intellectual development and diagnose attention deficit syndrome.
On January 30, 2015, President Obama announced the national targeted medical program which is comparable to the "Lunar Probe Project", aiming to cure serious diseases such as cancer and diabetes. In March 2016, Ministry of Science and Technology of the PRC issued the key special project of "Precise Medical Research", planning to input RMB60 billion before 2030. National Health and Family Planning Commission also released 61 "Precise Medical Research" projects, with a total investment of RMB641 million. In the course, many professors introduced cutting-edge achievements in the field of cancer therapy.
Professor Lily Yang of Cancer Research Faculty, Medical School, Emory University introduced new cancer nanotechnology and imaging methods and how to apply them into the clinical tests for tumor and early cancer detection, drugs targeting therapy. She also introduced the latest research on treatment via noninvasive imaging assessment and its surgical effect.
Liying Zhang, Director of Clinical Molecular Genetics Laboratory of American's top Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in combination with her specific work in laboratory, introduced to the finance EMBA students the development status of precision medicine and its application in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In particular, she shared her and her team's diagnosis and treatment experience in breast cancer, colon cancer, gastric cancer and called on China to actively promote the establishment of clinical molecular genetics detection system.
Dr. Cong Le, specially-appointed professor of Tsinghua University and MIT researcher lectured on "Gene Editing", introducing the forefront development of gene sequencing and gene editing and the innovative exploration of disease diagnosis and treatment. The paper published by Dr. Cong Le in Science as the first author in 2013 described how to apply the CRISPR gene editing technology to cells of animals, plants and human beings, fully demonstrating that the CRISPR technology has the potential to modify the mammalian genome and contribute to human disease modeling improvement and the exploration of new therapeutic methods, becoming the highest cited paper ever in the field of CRISPR gene editing and gene engineering.
Dr. Cong has published more than 20 papers in magazines such as Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Biotechnology and NatureMethods, with more than 6,000 citations. His achievements in aspects of gene editing, cancer treatment, etc. have applied for more than 20 American and global patents, 11 of which have obtained the approval of United States Patent Office and European Patent Office, and been authorized to a number of listed companies including Editas Medicine, Monsanto, Bayer. The technology he developed is widely used in more than 20,000 laboratories around the world.
Exploring the Direction of Innovative Technology
In the one-week course module in the U.S., Professor H. Jerry Qi of Georgia Institute of Technology and Wang Zhonglin, Professor of Georgia Institute of Technology and foreign academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences lectured on the latest development of 4D Printing Technology and Nanotechnology respectively.
The cohort also visited the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and the Clinical Gene Sequencing Laboratory of Broad Institute. They also visited iRobot, where Executive Vice-president Glen Weinstein introduced the frontier technology of the robot industry and the development planning of iRobot.
