The Institute for Advanced Study of Shenzhen University held the 2020 strategy conference on December 28th, 2019. Dean Feng Chen, Deputy Dean Meng Li, and Yang Wei, more than ten faculty teachers, administrative and technical staff attended the meeting and participated in the discussion.

The conference was hosted by Dean Feng Chen. In the beginning, he briefly introduced the aim and the agenda of this meeting. Then he appreciated the hard work of all full-time teachers, researchers, and staff of the IAS in 2019, and sincerely hoped that everyone works harder and completes the goals together in 2020, with full energy and effort. Then Deputy Dean Yang Wei started to deliver a final report for 2019.

The IAS has been trying to build a small-scale, high-level, interdisciplinary, foundation-oriented, research-oriented and international academic zone in Shenzhen University. In terms of teaching, the college has four undergraduate programs for students and they can major in mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology.  There are four postgraduate programs, including MSc. in materials science and engineering, MSc. in complex system and data science, MSc. in life health and environment, and PhD. in municipal environment and public health. In addition, the college has established joint doctoral programs with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Maryland. Through the unique talent-training mode, the IAS has achieved good teaching results in 2019, and won the first prize of Guangdong Provincial Teaching Achievement Award, the first prize of Shenzhen Advanced Education Unit, the first prize of Teaching Achievement Award of Shenzhen University, and the Excellent Undergraduate Teaching and Management Organization Award of Shenzhen University. Up to September, 2019, more than 40 SCI papers have been published in well-known foreign journals by students from the innovational class in science and engineering of IAS. 60% of the 2019 UG graduates have entered well-known overseas universities for further study, and 20% have stayed in the college or entered famous domestic universities for postgraduate study.

The IAS have been trying to recruit high-quality teachers. Up to now, IAS has 37 full-time teachers, 6 part-time teachers, 10 principle investigators, which includes 7 national distinguished experts. In terms of the research, IAS now has a Shenzhen Key Laboratory, a 2019 Shenzhen Peacock Team, and an Innovative Entrepreneurship Team of Guangdong Province’s ZhuJiang Talent Plan. Up to December, 2019, the Institute has received 167 projects at different levels, with a cumulative funding of nearly 200 million, and published 277 SCI papers. The number of papers published in 2019 is nearly double that of 2018. 28 invention patents have been applied. IAS also created a series of special scientific and research activities, such as Distinguished Scholars Lecturing Program and IAS Academic Symposium, etc. In terms of internationalization, the college has in-depth cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, the University of Maryland, the University of Cambridge, the Imperial College of Technology, and the Nanyang Technological University, and regularly conducts overseas study and exchange activities. Moreover, IAS also built an international faculty team, provided the Chinese-English bilingual education and continued to improve the college's internationalization level.

At the same time, Deputy Dean Yang Wei concluded that the college still has some shortcomings in teaching, undergraduate training, graduate and doctoral students’ enrollment, recruitment and laboratory construction. At last, Dean Feng Chen led the teachers seriously reflect on the previous work of the college in 2019 and had a discussion on enhancing the college's social influence, the decoration of new office buildings, the orientation of students' cultivation, and the possibility of building new disciplines.