Mário Barbosa awarded “Qiushi Invited Professor” by Chinese university

Mário Barbosa, Professor Emeritus at the University of Porto, retired Full Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (ICBAS) and researcher at the Institute of Research and Innovation in Health at the University of Porto (i3S) was recently honored with the title of “Qiushi Invited Professor” from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. This is the highest honor given by this university to foreign researchers.

A “Qiushi Invited Professor” is selected from among world-renowned scientists who have significant international academic influence in their fields of knowledge and who have achieved notable recognition from the academic community. "Qiushi", which means "Seeking the Truth", is the motto of Zhejiang University.

The Academic Committee of this Chinese university unanimously agreed to confer the title of “Qiushi Invited Professor” to Mário Barbosa due to his “distinguished academic position, his research in the area of biomaterials and his substantial contributions to Sino-Portuguese cooperation”. The Academic Committee believes that the Portuguese researcher’s scientific achievements “will undoubtedly contribute to accelerating the university's progress towards becoming a world-class institution”.

For Mário Barbosa, this distinction is recognition of the work carried out by several i3S researchers in collaboration with Zhejiang University. This university has undergone great development in recent years, particularly after the opening of a large campus in the city of Hangzhou and an international campus in the city of Haining. i3S’s collaboration with China is widely recognized by Zhejiang University and other Chinese universities.

The collaboration between Mário Barbosa and China began in 1998, when he was a researcher at the National Institute of Biomedical Engineering (INEB), now included in i3S. Over the years, this collaboration took the form of joint research projects, exchanges of doctoral students and the holding of scientific meetings between Portugal and China and between Europe and China.