Preparation for Setting Up ISEEL Joint Lab on Senior Service and Smart Home in Shanghai

On 8-9 April and 14-17 April meetings were held in Shanghai, including meetings with BesTV/SMG, Tekes, Tongji University and Aalto University and VTT experts and the Sino-Finnish Center team. The meetings with BesTV involved Mr. Liu Yong, Deputy General Manager of International BD Department, and Mr. Zheng Jie, VP Exec Vice Dean of BesTV Research Institute, and other colleagues. Joint interests were identified in the area of smart home services and specifically such that will be relevant to the elderly at home. It was suggested that during 2014 a joint roadmap for Sino-Finnish cooperation in this area would be outlined. For providing appropriate working platforms and for involving experts the local institutions and development environments are planned to be involved, in particular the new ISEEL Joint Lab to be set up at the Sino-Finnish Centre of Tongji University (see below).

On 16 April it was announced that Mr. Matti Hämäläinen, DIGILE / ICT Alliance and Aalto, has been appointed as a National High-end Foreign Expert (under the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs Program) at Tongji University to act as the Director of a new Joint Lab on Intelligent Services Embedded in Everyday Life for the Wellbeing of Elderly (ISEEL). The aim, in accordance to the co-creative approach of the ICT Alliance, is to create an open platform based at Tongji University, at the Sino-Finnish Centre (SFC), for research, education and innovation. It would bring together academic experts, students, companies, public entities, NGOs and other relevant actors from China, Finland and internationally for the co-creation and study of solutions for “smart home” and “smart life” with a special focus on the wellbeing of elderly.

At Tongji the meetings with experts were organized, including Prof. Lou Yongqi, Dean, College of Design & Innovation, Prof. Liu Fuqiang, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Prof. Dong Hua, Dean of College of Arts and Media, and Dr. Su Yunsheng, Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design Institute and co-founder of “Urban China” Magazine, and the Aalto SFC key people, Prof. Matti Nojonen and Mr. Matti M. Hämäläinen. The topics included the preparation of the ISEEL Lab activities as well as on-going ICT Alliance projects, the related Aalto – Tongji cooperation, and education related initiatives in the Sino-Finnish Learning Garden and the EduTech Ecosystem. One potential pilot in the professional education area is specifically senior care services training.