Dr. Launius on Robots and Humans in Space

October 29, 2015 -  Associate Director, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and renowned historian of space exploration, Roger D. Launius capped two days on campus with a two hour presentation and reception. The subject of his talk, a history and analysis of human spaceflight, elicited a lively back and forth with students and professors on the relative merits of human versus robotic space exploration. Dr. Alexander Geppert, the principal organizer of the visit, introduced Dr. Launius to the large audience that included distinguished scientists and representatives from the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Encounter with A Nobel Laureate: Michael Spence on the Economy of China

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 -- Vice Chancellor Lehman hosted a lunchtime talk with Michael Spence, professor of economics at NYU Stern and a recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work on the dynamics of information flows and market development. Surrounded by a throng of students, faculty and staff gathered  for the occasion in the Art Gallery featuring Qin Feng's striking art, Prof. Spence made remarks about the Chinese economy, the outlook for economic growth, and the challenging transition China is managing on the way to becoming a middle income economy.  In addition, Dr. Spence discussed the ripple effect of the Chinese economy in an increasingly interconnected world, and the implementation of new regulations aimed at greater transparency. 

NYU Shanghai Launches Enhanced Website

October 26, 2015 - NYU Shanghai launched a new homepage to welcome visitors, and serve as the campus community's gathering place for promoting upcoming events and sharing news, information and images about what is taking place every day on campus.  Beyond enhancing the university's outreach across the globe, the new site, ably created by the Office of Web Services, provides up-to-date information about the recently released works by faculty, as well as a running catalogue of  the "shows and talks" held at NYU Shanghai. There is even a link to a running list of recommended readings and viewings  from across town and around the world.  The new page sports a menu for students with quick links to the academic calendar, and other useful resources about Majors, Study-Away and Shanghai life.  

NYU Shanghai Global Week Launched 

October 19 - 23, 2015 – Last week, the NYU Shanghai Office of Global Affairs debuted its first ever Global Week to promote Study Away with two info sessions for freshmen and sophomores.  Jackie Klein, PhD, Assistant Dean of Global Affairs, who led the sessions with Will Li, Global Affairs Manager, described the event, saying, "One of the opportunities that our students look most forward to during their NYU Shanghai college experience is to study away in one or more of NYU’s 11 sites and 2 degree-granting campuses." Katya Grim, Associate Dean of Global Education from NYU Abu Dhabi, and Larry Jackson, Ph.D., Director for Global Academic Planning from the NYU Office of the Provost, also came to Shanghai to present exciting opportunities to study away at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Washington, DC. Students who are eligible for study away during the 2016/17 academic year should meet with their advisors before submitting applications by February 15th.

This fall, the NYU Silver School of Social Work welcomed its first cohort of global MSW students at NYU Shanghai, the first NYU master’s-level program in China. The program's eight students hail from the United States, Canada, and China.  Read More

Art Gallery Opening Triggers Broad Media Coverage

The positive review published by Artron.net led to a widespread, positive coverage of NYU Shanghai's Art Gallery opening with the international acclaimed Qin Feng's solo show "Ode to Dancing Ink". A sampling of the favorable coverage includes  CCTV, Jiefang Daily, 新民网 and 看看新闻网, just to name a few.

Harder a Regular on VOICES

NYU Shanghai Global Adjunct Professor Stephen Harder regularly contributes to a local  current affairs television show, Voices, on the International Shanghai Channel. The half hour discussions, in both English and Mandarin, touch on a wide variety of topics in Chinese society.  See more

Appearances Are Everything in Death as in Life

Armin Selbitschka, Assistant Professor of Ancient History, talked about his research on early Chinese notions of the afterlife, at last week’s NYU Shanghai Faculty Lunch Seminar Series. The Gazette caught up with him to talk about his work and learned about his own path to teaching.
Where did the interest in China’s ancient cemeteries come from?
Actually, my interest in archaeology initially had nothing to do with China. There is an educational book series in Germany called “Was Ist Was?” (What’s what?), which had been around for over fifty years. On my sixth birthday, I was given a volume on Germanic tribes (Die Germanen) that introduced me to the world of pots and bones. From that moment on, my future seemed pretty clear: either I become an archaeologist or a professional soccer goalie for Bayern Munich. Read more  
 

Opportunities in Social Media Data Mining

October 28, 2015 - NYU Shanghai hosted its first Workshop on Mining Social Networks. The day-long event explored a number of themes ranging from textual mining and the application of natural language processing tools to the “crawling” of Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) and extracting from data regional sentiment. The workshop was held in the university’s new ideaLab . Read more
 

Expanding Epistemic Risk 
Rebecca Kukla
Introduction by Dr. Brad Weslake

17:30 - 18:30 ~ AB Room 101

China and the Global Art Market
Anne Higonnet
Introduction by Provost Joanna Waley-Cohen

17:30 - 18:30 ~ AB Room 101

Trying to Keep Up with a Fast-Changing China
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Introduction by Prof. Anna Greenspan

15:00 - 16:00 ~ AB Room 213

Fall Entrepreneurship Speaker Series #4
Bunny Yan, Founder of Squirrelz
Jenny Zhu, Founder of OpenLanguage 

17:00 - 19:00 ~ AB Room 900 "ideaLab"

CARNIVAL OF THE DEAD (死亡嘉年华) is this Saturday night! Are you ready for it? From 7pm-9pm on the 8th Floor of the Academic Building! Additional shuttle buses are scheduled for this event ... Also participating in the Halloween spirit, the cafeteria featured special dishes prepared, such as Bloody Brains and Eyeballs, Chopped-off Fingers and Creepy Crawly Tarantulas ...
REMINDERS: ... Pass/Fail and Withdrawal Deadline...is next Friday, November 6 ... 
AROUND TOWN: At the Shanghai International Literary Festival on Wednesday November 4th at noon, Stephen Harder interviews Daniel Bell, author of Democracy, Meritocracy, or Both? The Case of China ... on Sunday, November 8th at 11am Lena Scheen will talk about her book, Shanghai Literary Imaginings - A City in Transformation ...
NEW FACES: Yiwei Zhang, 张一炜 has joined us as Associate, Academic Affairs, reporting to Feifei Zou, Manager of Academic Affairs ... Paige Levesque has joined the Shanghai Global Affairs team as Academic Affairs Coordinator, reporting to Jackie Klein...
OVER THE HORIZON: HackShanghai 2015 will kick off next weekend ...with 250 hackers from all of the world expected on 15th floor, spend 24 hours non stop to design their best ideas. Please find more here ...

During my high school years, I became a devotee of the mathematically inspired artist M.C. Escher, most famous for his never-ending staircase, Klimmen en dalen. In my junior year, my mother happened upon the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, and remembering my admiration for Escher, she purchased it for me. The book is Douglas Hofstadter’s paean to self-referencing systems like Escher’s never-ending staircase, and Bach’s ever-rising fugues. The book deeply explores recursion in logic, as in the classic liar's paradox: “This statement is false”.  GEB (as it is affectionately known) served as my introduction to fundamental concepts in logic, mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, and is probably a central reason I became a computational neuroscientist. It is a challenging, fun, and intensely thought-provoking read, even 35 years later. 

 At the prestigious 2015 Pujiang Innovation Forum, “The Future Science Forum - Brain science and artificial intelligence”, Xiao-Jing Wang, NYU Shanghai Global Professor of Neural Science and Vice Provost for Research, gave a keynote speech provocatively entitled, "Theoretical Neuroscience: Brain Science needs its own Newton”. Xiao-Jing Wang explained that he wanted to convey the message that Neuroscientists need to develop a fundamental theory in the language of mathematics to make sense of big data from laboratory experiments, explain our behavior and mental life, as well as to provide a foundation for brain-inspired artificial intelligence, much in the same way Newton’s laws can explain an uncountable number of experimental results, and has predictive power in engineering miracles such as the moon landing.  The powerful title ended up in the headline of Jiefang Daily’s coverage of the Forum.