Speaker: Robert WestVenue: Lecture Room, Floor 1, School of Medicine, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Professor Robert West is Emeritus Professor of Health Psychology at University College London (UCL), founder of PRIME Theory of Motivation, and one of the key co-creators of the COM-B model and the Behaviour Change Wheel. His research has long focused on motivation, addictive behaviours, health behaviour change, and the theoretical development of behaviour interventions, and has had broad international influence in the fields of health psychology and behavioural science. In particular, he has made important contributions in the fields of smoking cessation and tobacco control.Professor West has long been committed to elucidating nicotine addiction, smoking cessation motivation, the maintenance of smoking cessation behaviour, and relapse mechanisms. He has led and participated in policy-influential continuous monitoring studies such as the UK “Smoking Toolkit Study,” providing important evidence-based support for UK tobacco control policy, the optimisation of smoking cessation services, and the assessment and forecasting of population smoking cessation trends. He formerly served as Director of Tobacco Studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, and has long served as a consultant to UK institutions related to smoking cessation training and tobacco control.

Speaker: Susan MichieVenue: Lecture Room, Floor 1, School of Medicine, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Professor Susan Michie is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London (UCL), Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change, Co-Director of the UK Behavioural Research Association, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine (FSBM), a member of the UK Behavioural Science Policy Research Group, and an internationally renowned expert in the field of behaviour change science.Professor Michie has long been deeply engaged in the fields of health psychology and behaviour change. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, she designs and promotes health behaviour intervention strategies at the population, organisational, and individual levels. She has published more than 600 academic papers, covering core areas such as health psychology, behaviour change, public health, and health service systems.Her outstanding academic contributions are as follows: she has led the development of core research tools in the field of behaviour change; her representative work, The Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions, provides a theoretical framework for behaviour intervention projects worldwide; she has led the “Human Behaviour Change Project”; she has promoted the application of behavioural science in fields such as health promotion and chronic disease prevention; and her research findings provide a scientific basis for optimising practical solutions in the health field and formulating public health policies, thereby helping to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Speaker: Xiaodong(Chris) ZhaoVenue: Room A423, School of Management, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Directive (EU) 2015/849 (the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive [AMLD4]) of the European Union (EU) requires firms to identify and disclose their ultimate beneficial owners. Exploiting AMLD4 as an exogenous shock to private firms’ ownership transparency, we document that private firms in the EU are more likely to win government procurement contracts after AMLD4 adoption. Cross-sectional analyses show that the impact of AMLD4 appears stronger when governments (i) know less about bidding firms, (ii) procure products from R&D-intensive or durable goods industries, (iii) have higher-quality beneficial owner information, and (iv) have more discretion in contract allocation. Moreover, allocating more contracts to private firms reduces procurement costs and the unemployment rate. Overall, ownership transparency may help ease informational frictions when governments procure from private firms. This study underscores the effectiveness of ownership transparency as a type of nonfinancial disclosure that narrows the transparency gap between private and public firms.

Speaker: Sophia BanoVenue: Room 202, The 4th Teaching Building, Yuquan CampusAbstract: Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and surgical data science are driving a new era of AI-assisted robotic surgery, offering promising innovations in imaging, surgical navigation, and robotic intervention. These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to enhance surgical precision, stability, and decision support, ultimately reducing cognitive load on surgeons and optimizing procedural efficiency. This talk will explore AI applications across various surgical procedures, focusing on field-of-view expansion in endoscopic surgery, 3D reconstruction in endoluminal procedures, and surgical context interpretation. Emphasizing both technical advancements and clinical translation, this talk will highlight the progress toward next-generation surgical interventions.

Speaker: Xinyue YeVenue: Room A109, Anzhong Building, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Dr. Xinyue Ye is currently the Shelby Distinguished Professor at the University of Alabama. He is the first elected Fellow of the American Association of Geographers from the Early Career category. In 2025, he received the AAG Distinguished Scholarly Achievement Award for his groundbreaking contributions at the intersection of geography, urban planning, and data science (the award is given to only one to two scholars annually), setting the record for the fastest election after receiving his PhD. In the same year, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of his outstanding contributions to geographic artificial intelligence and urban informatics. He was the only Chinese scholar among the 15 Fellows elected from the Geology Section in that year. Since 2020, he has been consecutively listed in Stanford University's World's Top 2% Scientists in both career-long cumulative impact and yearly academic impact.

Speaker: Hans KosterVenue: Room 426, School of Economics, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Hans Koster is Full Professor of Urban Economics and Real Estate in the Department of Spatial Economics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is also a Research Fellow at the Tinbergen Institute and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and an elected board member of the Urban Economics Association. Hans studies how cities work: why people and firms cluster together, what makes housing affordable or not, and whether government interventions in land use and housing actually improve welfare. His research combines large-scale administrative and microdata with advanced econometric techniques.

Speaker: Krzysztof MatyjaszewskiVenue: Lecture Hall 123, Hetong Building 6, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Polymers are ubiquitous in our society, with over 400 million tons of annual production (1 kg per person per week). They are used in every possible aspect of our lives, including construction, transportation, clothing, electronics, and biomedical areas. Without polymers, there would be no computers, no smartphones, no Covid-19 vaccines, and no protective medical gear. Yet, the majority of these polymers are ill-defined and discarded after a singular use. Our main goal has been to prepare well-defined polymers with precisely controlled macromolecular architecture under environmentally benign conditions, using ppm of catalysts, an aqueous environment, and open-air with additional control by light, electrical current, mechanical forces or benign chemicals such as ascorbic acid. We employed a commercially successful radical polymerization process as a main synthetic tool; however, we faced very rapid radical termination and propagation, preventing any polymerization control. Using intermittent deactivation of growing radicals, we tamed uncontrolled radical behavior and extended the life of growing radicals from less than 1 second to several hours or days. The dynamic exchange between active radicals and dormant species is catalyzed by ppm amounts of copper catalyst in atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). It enabled macromolecular engineering and provided access to uniform star, comb, bottlebrush, or ring polymers with controlled chain composition such as block, gradient, or periodic structures. This also provided access to biocongugates by covalently linking synthetic polymers with proteins, nucleic acids, or carbohydrates, as well as attaching polymers to inorganic surfaces. Such well-defined polymers and hybrid materials outperform conventional commercial products; they can self-assemble, self-repair, depolymerize back to monomers and respond to external stimuli. They find applications as advanced materials in the areas of biomedicine, energy, and environment.

Speaker: Ulrich SchriddeVenue: Conference Hall, East 6F, Liangzhu LaboratoryAbstract: Dr. Ulrich Schridde is currently a Senior Editor for the Cell Press journal Neuron and lives and works in Boston, MA, USA. At Neuron, Ulli is part of the editorial team and handles/oversees the review and publication of manuscripts across all areas of neuroscience. Ulli also acts as a neuroscience advisor to other journals in the CP portfolio. From 2004 to 2007 he was a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Hal Blumenfeld at the Dept. of Neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine, USA. He did a 2nd postdoc with Dr. Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics before joining Cell Press in 2012.In this presentation, Dr. Ulrich Schridde offers researchers a behind-the-scenes guide to publishing in one of neuroscience's leading journals. It covers Neuron's scope and editorial standards, submission strategies, and the full editorial process — from initial consideration and peer review to revision, decision, and acceptance. Practical advice on writing papers, crafting cover letters, selecting reviewers, and navigating appeals is complemented by an overview of Cell Press transfer options and the new multi-journal submission model.Please join us for the BBMI Distinguished Lecture Series to hear directly from a Neuron Senior Editor on how to navigate publishing in a top neuroscience journal.

Speaker: Stevan DubljevicVenue: Room 211, College of Control Science and Engineering, Yuquan CampusAbstract: Effective pipeline leak detection and localization are essential for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in hydrocarbon transportation systems. However, the complex spatiotemporal dynamics, limited sensor coverage, and measurement disturbances pose significant challenges. This talk presents advanced estimation and control strategies designed for pipeline networks modeled by infinite-dimensional systems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs). Specifically, a novel moving horizon estimation (MHE) framework is introduced for constrained estimation of leak size and location, using a discrete-time pipeline hydraulic model derived via the structure-preserving Cayley-Tustin discretization. By leveraging coordinate transformation, the estimation problem is decoupled to improve leak localization accuracy. On the other hand, a discrete Luenberger observer is designed for state reconstruction under limited measurements, and support vector machines (SVM) are employed for data-driven leak classification and localization. The MHE framework is further extended by integrating state and parameter estimation with model predictive control (MPC) for set-point tracking in PDEs-governed pipeline network systems. Finally, an industrial application involving a pipeline system in Alberta will be discussed.