A memorial ceremony for the late academician Zhang Zhongjun was solemnly held by the Department of Automation of SEIEE at the No. 100 Upper Hall coinciding with Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s 118th anniversary last April 12, 2014. The ceremony was held in honor of his memory as a Founder, as a celebration of his contributions to automation and an event to reminisce about his demeanor and charming personality that helped keep the sustainability and development of the field of automation. The ceremony was hosted by Professor Chen Weidong along with more than 100 attendees who were SEIEE’s leaders, his former officemates, relatives and other faculty and students from Automation.
Professor Chen Weidong first gave a warm welcome to all alumni present and thanked them for their continuous concern for and support to the University and to the Department of Automation. It was proud moment to note that the alumni from various batches got together to have a good time back at the University. Professor Xi Yugeng, a former student of Dr. Zhang Zhongjun, made a presentation on Mr. Zhang Zhongjun’s efforts to build top-notch control subject. He emotionally shared about Mr. Zhang’s life and stressed to the attendees his patriotism, innovation, dedication and excellent character and how his education and academic thoughts provided a solid foundation that pointed the future direction of automation.With the united efforts of administrators, faculty and students, the Department of Automation Control Discipline was the first batch that conferred masteral and doctoral degrees and has always held 2 national key disciplines, the Control Theory and Control Engineering and the Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems, which started enrolling graduate students way back in 1978. By 1985, it was also the first batch that was allowed to establish mobile post-doctoral research stations and stayed on top of the previous Level 1 discipline evaluation. In recent years, with the financial aid from Projects 211 and 985, the school has improved the subject teaching and research conditions in automation, which led the direction, faculty team, lab equipments and talent cultivation to a high level, with great impacts domestically and abroad.
Professor Shi Songjiao, a former colleague of Professor Zhang Zhongjun, also gave a testimony of his glorious career which had all attendees’ emotions swell with pride. SEIEE Vice President Li Shaoyuan of the Department of Automation encouraged every student to make Mr. Zhang as a role model to emulate by studying hard in order to bring his espoused values and dreams come true as they prepare for their own futures.
At the end of the ceremony, all the attendees arrived at the Middle Hall to offered a basket of flowers to the statue of Zhang Zhongjun as an expression of their admiration and to honor his memory. For the purpose of better inheriting merit, promoting seniors’ educational thought, and talent cultivation concepts, this commemorative activity will now be an annual event during the anniversary of the University.
