Professor Xie Xincheng is a distinguished Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), as well as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is Chair Professor at Peking University and the Director of the Institute for Nanoelectronic Devices and Quantum Computing at Fudan University.
Professor Xie completed his undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1982 and went on to obtain his PhD from the University of Maryland in 1988. He was the Regents Professor of Oklahoma State University. Professor Xie directed the International Center for Quantum Structures at the CAS and led the Laboratory of Condensed Matter Theory and Computation at the Institute of Physics, CAS. He was the Founding Director of the International Center for Quantum Materials and served as the Dean of the School of Physics at Peking University. He assumed the role of Divisional Director of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in 2016, and Vice President of NSFC in 2018.
Professor Xie's research in condensed matter physics has covered topics like the Quantum Hall effect, charge and spin transport, quantum systems, and strongly correlated electron systems. He has held editorial positions with "Physical Review Letters" and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of "SCIENCE CHINA Physics-Mechanics & Astronomy”, in addition to serving on the editorial boards of several significant international academic journals.
Professor Jane Norman is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, taking up the role on 1 January 2025.
Prior to joining the University of Nottingham as DVC and Provost in December 2022 her previous roles include Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow (2007 - 2008), Director of the Edinburgh Tommy’s Centre for Maternal and Fetal Health (2008 - 2019), Vice Principal People and Culture at the University of Edinburgh (2013 - 2019) and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol (2019 - 2022). She was an Honorary Consultant Obstetrician in the NHS in Glasgow (1995 - 2008) and in Edinburgh (2008 - 2019).
Professor Norman is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She has served as a Non-Executive Director of University Hospitals Bristol and Weston since 2021.
Find out more about Professor Jane Norman's career and the role of the Vice-Chancellor.
Xu Yafen became a party member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1981 and is a representative of the eleventh CPC Congress of Zhejiang Province and a member of Zhejiang CPPCC Committee. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Dundee and is a visiting professor of Tsinghua University, as well as a research fellow of the Human Science Institute of Management Science Academy of China.
Wanli Education Group, which she founded, has a national reputation for academic excellence and Xu has made a considerable contributions to educational reform in China. She has published many papers on psychology, behavior science, management, education and other fields in national and provincial academic journals and other publications.
Jon Garibaldi is the current Provost of University of Nottingham Ningbo China, having taken up office on 1 Jan 2024.
Professor Garibaldi joined the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham UK in 2002. He started his professional career working in the software industry for approximately seven years, after having completed an initial degree in Physics at the University of Bristol UK. He returned to academia to complete an MSc and then PhD in 'Artificial Intelligence' at the University of Plymouth UK, before his first permanent academic position at De Montfort University UK. He became the Head of School of Computer Science in Jan 2016, leading the School through significant growth from around 670 students in 2015/16 to over 1500 in 2023/24.
Professor Garibaldi's main research interest is in developing intelligent computational techniques to model human reasoning in uncertain environments, with a particular emphasis on the medical domain. He also has interests in data analysis, particularly of complex and uncertain data, data mining, clustering and classification, and in the deployment of decision support systems in practical real-world applications. Over his career, he has been Principal Investigator on research projects worth over £3.5m (~30m RMB), and Co-Investigator on a multi-disciplinary portfolio of grants worth over £82m (~750m RMB). He has published over 400 academic research papers, including around 200 journal papers. He was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems from 2017-2022, is active in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. He has a track-record of research collaborations with colleagues in many institutions across China, and has held Visiting Professor positions at Shenzhen University and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei.
Professor Shen Weiqi serves as an expert of the Higher Education Evaluation and Assessment Committee led by the Chinese Ministry of Education, and also an expert on Sino-foreign education evaluation at the Ministry of Education. His expertise extends to the role of Deputy Chair of the Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education Division of China Education Association for International Exchange (CACIE). He is also a Senior Advisor for the Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education Research Branch of the China Association of Higher Education and a review expert for the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Professor Shen has been involved in the entire process of the establishment and development of UNNC.
He has published more than 100 papers in national and international academic journals, with his primary research areas being plant nutrition and flowering physiology.
Professor Shen has been honoured by municipal and provincial authorities for the quality of both his teaching and research.
Professor Guoping Qiu is the Vice Provost for Education and Student Experience (ESE) of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), having taken up office on 2 September 2024.
Professor Qiu joined the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham UK in 2000 where he is currently Professor (Chair) of Visual Information Processing. Before joining UNNC as VP ESE, he was Head of School of Computer Science at UNNC from 2012 to 2017, and Acting Dean of Faculty of Science and Engineering in 2013. His outstanding leadership helped develop the School of Computer Science into a strong discipline at UNNC. During that period, he was the Founding Director of the International Doctoral Innovation Center, a flagship transnational talent training platform which successfully educated 100 PhD students in the areas of digital economy and new energy technologies.
Professor Qiu’s main research areas are artificial intelligence and image processing. He developed some of the earliest image processing applications of neural networks and one of the earliest forms of representation learning. He is best known for his research into high dynamic range (HDR) digital photography where he pioneered optimisation-based computational approaches to HDR tone mapping. He has authored over 300 research papers, invented multiple US and European patents, and translated research breakthroughs into spinout companies that have secured multimillion-pound investments. His research contributions have garnered international recognition - according to the latest world's top 2% scientists report published by Stanford University, he ranked in the top 0.5% in the sub-fields of artificial intelligence and image processing, reflecting his significant impact and expertise in these domains.
Professor Laura Bishop is the Vice Provost for Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University. Prior to joining UNNC, she was a Professor of Palaeoanthropology and Pro-Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Science at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). In this role since 2022, she had strategic and operational leadership of the Faculty of Science at LJMU. Prof Bishop was the Principal of the Sino-British College (SBC) of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology from 2018 to 2021. Her leadership and influencing skills helped steer SBC successfully through a complex and challenging period of change.
Prof Bishop is an active advocate for internationalization in higher education. Having worked with the UK-China Joint Institute Alliance and served on the Executive Committee of the British Chamber of Commerce (Shanghai), she has excellent knowledge of the landscape of higher education in China, and of the trends which will both challenge and catalyse UNNC’s research and knowledge exchange.
Prof Bishop is the author of more than 60 scholarly publications. Her research explores the environmental contexts of the evolution of human behaviour in Africa, with a focus on the interpretation of the dynamic aspects of hominin evolution, particularly behaviour and ecology.
Professor Alain Chong is Vice Provost for Global Engagement and Partnerships and Professor of Information Systems at Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) China. He joined the University of Nottingham Ningbo China in 2012 and served as Dean of the Graduate School for more than 6 years before assuming his current position. Prior to joining NUBS, he worked as a software engineer, postdoctoral researcher and Associate Professor of Computer Science in the UK, Malaysia and Hong Kong. His research interests include technology-driven disruptions such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, and live streaming, as well as design and adoption issues related to e-commerce, mobile commerce, and SCM systems.
Professor Chong has received numerous awards and recognition for his contributions to the field of information systems. He was awarded the Ten Outstanding Young Malaysian Award in 2012 by the Junior Chamber International, the Ningbo Camellia Award in 2020, and the Zhejiang Westlake Award in 2023 for his contributions to Ningbo City and Zhejiang Province. He has also been named as one of the most cited Chinese researchers by the Elsevier Scopus database for eight consecutive years from 2015 to 2023, and was selected as one of the "World's Top 2% Scientists" by Stanford University in 2022. He is one of the top 50 information systems scientists in the world in the career database, and the only two scientists from China to be included. He is also a recipient of the Ningbo 3315 Individual Talent Scheme and the 2022 NSFC International Excellent Young Scientists. He has held visiting research positions at Nanyang Technological University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Greenwich University, and is an Adjunct Professor at Monash University, Taylor's University Malaysia, Honorary Professor at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics.
Professor Umesh Sharma is the Vice Provost for People and Culture at UNNC, having taken up office on 1 April 2025.
Professor Umesh Sharma holds a PhD in Education from the University of Melbourne. Before joining UNNC, he was the Associate Dean (Equity and Inclusion) at Monash University's Faculty of Education, a position he held since 2021. In this role, he had been instrumental in driving transformative change in equity and inclusion, leading initiatives that have significantly improved the faculty's standing in these areas. Professor Sharma has extensive experience in leadership, research, and international collaboration, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, including China.
Professor Sharma has a proven track record in fostering inclusive environments and has led several high-impact projects, such as the development of the Monash University Disability Inclusion Strategy and the Pacific Indicators for Disability Inclusive Education (Pacific-INDIE). His leadership style is characterised by consultation, collaboration, and care, making him well-suited to lead UNNC's people and culture agenda.
His research has examined why children with disabilities and challenging behaviours are often excluded from schools and how we can effectively reform the education system to include them in our schools and society. The Australian Chief Scientist named him Australia’s Field Leader in 2019, 2022, and 2023 based on the impact of his work locally and internationally. According to the Stanford University and Elsevier lists, he ranks in the top 2% of Research Scientists.
Hongbo (Jenny) Dong successively served as Youth League Secretary and Office Director of Zhejiang Wanli Education Group, Party Secretary of Ningbo Mechanical Industry School, and Dean and Party Branch Secretary of Innovation Entrepreneur College in Zhejiang Wanli University (ZWU).
She obtained an Ed.D (doctorate in education) degree in Durham University, UK, in 2014, with a research focus on intercultural communication in the context of Sino-Foreign cooperative universities. After completing the Ed.D, she opened two courses (Intercultural Communication and Intercultural Competence Training) in ZWU for international students and Chinese students of Innovation Entrepreneur College respectively.
With many years of experience in education and administration, she is well-versed in the educational systems and practices in higher institutions in both China and the UK. She has rich experience and unique viewpoint on how Chinese students can overcome cultural barriers and better adapt to overseas study and life. Meanwhile, she has received several honorary titles in municipal and provincial levels, and has published many articles on topics of education and student management.
Dr Gang Dong is Deputy Party Secretary and Executive Director of Government Relations of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
Dr Dong obtained a Doctor’s degree in History from Zhejiang University in 2004. Before joining UNNC, he was Vice President of Ningbo Childhood Education College. His previous posts also include Director of Strategy and Regulation Department and Director of Higher Education Department of Ningbo Education Bureau, and Vice President of Ningbo Education College. He is Member of the 13th Zhejiang Provincial Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Dr Dong has expertise in laws, regulations and policies of higher education, has many years of managerial experience in teaching and learning, international exchange and cooperation, student recruitment, executive training and so on. He has also been conducting research on education regulation and policies, building high-level universities, talent cultivation and university staffing. In recent years Dr Dong has led nearly 10 research projects at or above municipal level, and published a number of papers in core journals including "Research in Educational Development" and "Chinese University Science and Technology".
Professor Khong is the Dean of Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) China and a Professor of Marketing Analytics. Before joining NUBS China, Khong was the Executive Dean of one of the top private universities in Southeast Asia. During his four years tenure, he led an unranked business school to the top 100 in the world in the QS World University Rankings by Subject in Business and Management Studies.
Prior to this, Khong was the Associate Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange) of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and set up the Centre for Interdisciplinary Data Analytics which focuses on business analytics, digital economy and AI technologies. He has more than 20 years of working in academia and conducting research in services marketing, marketing analytics, behavioural science, and text analytics. He has received more than RMB 1.5 million in competitive funding from various funding bodies such as the Malaysia Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Funding, the Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education Translational Research Grant Scheme, etc.
Khong has served as a consultant focusing on service quality in one of the largest direct-selling companies in Malaysia. He was also involved in the Radio Audience Measurement project working with one of the leading global market insights and data analytics companies deriving the population proportionate to size stratified sampling. He led a team of researchers at NUBS, working with the capital market learning and development solutions provider of the securities commission, to study the trust of the financial services on the capital markets service providers in Malaysia.
Professor Morrison is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Prior to joining UNNC in 2024 she held several leadership positions, most recently as Dean of Science at the University of Law, where she instituted the Science School, which delivered programmes in Psychology, Computer Science, Criminology, Policing and Education.
Professor Morrison obtained her MA from the University of Glasgow and DPhil from the University of York, specializing in Psychology. Her research interests are diverse and her publications include topics such as language development, dementia, internet behaviour, and childhood and adult memories.
Professor Morrison is passionate about learning and teaching and is a past Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Education Board. She is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
Professor Jun Liang (John) Zhou is a Professor of Environmental Engineering and doctoral supervisor, who holds a PhD in Science from the University of Manchester. He is currently serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Prior to joining UNNC, he held various leadership positions.
Professor Zhou is a highly regarded expert in the fields of advanced water and wastewater treatment, contaminated land remediation, energy and resource recovery from waste, and vehicle emissions detection. He has secured many research grants from the EU, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Royal Society, the Leverhulme Trust, the UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, NNSFC, the National Key Research Programme etc. He has published approximately 350 papers in renowned international journals, with over 22000 citations in the Web of Science. Professor Zhou is one of the world's top 2% scientists and highly-cited researchers.
Professor Zhou is a regular assessor for funding bodies. He has been a college and panel member for various funders, including the European Framework Programmes and Horizon 2020, NERC, the Luxembourg National Research Fund, and the National Basic Research Program of China.
James joined the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) in February 2023 as the University’s Registrar. He is a member of UNNC Management Board and responsible for leading student administration and a number of key services: student recruitment and admissions, marketing & communications, academic services, sport and the library. He also leads on governance, with responsibility for the Provost’s office and Assurance. He is the Secretary General of the Joint Venture Board that governs UNNC.
James has worked in higher education for over twenty years in planning, governance, research and student administration roles at four previous universities in the UK. Before joining UNNC, he was the Academic Registrar of City, University of London where he was responsible for student administration and services for 20,000 students in central London.
Tom took on the role of Chief Financial and Planning Officer at UNNC in February 2020. In addition to having responsibility for the University’s finances, Tom’s portfolio also includes management and oversight of IT Services, Estates, Procurement, Business Development, and Strategy and Planning Team. Tom is a Chartered Management Accountant and has worked for a number of organisations in both the private and public sectors in the UK in a mix of Finance, HR and Commercial roles.
Prior to joining UNNC, Tom spent eight years working for Deloitte in both London and Shanghai. His main focus at Deloitte was in Finance Transformation where he led projects to resolve a wide range of problems that organisations were facing with their Finance Function. During his time at Deloitte Tom was heavily involved in the development of digital finance techniques and the future of finance. He worked for clients from a wide range of industries including central and local government, retail, luxury brands and telecommunications.