On the morning of October 16,2024, a delegation from the University of Reading, led by Professor Colette Fagan, visited our university. Wu Zhishen，President of HAUT and officials from relevant departments and units such as the Graduate School, International Exchange & Cooperation Office, School of Grain Oil and Food Sciences, School of Biotechnology, and School of International Education attended the meeting. It was hosted by Liu Guoshi, Director of the International Exchange & Cooperation Office.

At the meeting, Wu Zhishen first extended a warm welcome on behalf of the university to Professor Colette Fagan and the delegation, and briefly introduced to the guests the distinctive features of HAUT's disciplines, as well as the remarkable achievements made by the two universities over the past 20 years in areas such as China-foreign cooperative education, student and faculty exchanges, and research collaboration. Wu Zhishen emphasized that the two universities should fully leverage their respective strengths and characteristics in food science research through strong cooperation and complementary advantages to further strengthen exchanges and cooperation. He expressed his hope that, while consolidating and enhancing existing China-foreign cooperative education projects, the jointly established international joint laboratory by the two universities could be implemented in a practical manner, providing a new platform for future joint training of master's and doctoral students and collaborative scientific research, and thereby pushing the internationalization of the two universities' educational practices to a new level.

Professor Colette Fagan is the dean of the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading in the UK. She has long been committed to educational cooperation and academic and scientific research exchanges between the two universities in the field of food. She fully acknowledged the fruitful results achieved by the two universities in the China-foreign cooperative undergraduate education program, and hoped that the two universities could work together to face all kinds of challenges encountered in the cooperation process side by side, and strive to achieve new and better results on the basis of the close cooperation between the two universities in the past 20 years.

Subsequently, both sides conducted in-depth exchanges and discussions on the multi-domain cooperation that will be carried out in the next step. Through this meeting, they not only expanded their consensus, deepened mutual trust, but also further clarified their respective tasks and responsibilities, laying a solid foundation for further strengthening cooperation, promoting the construction of our university's "Double First-Class" initiatives, and enhancing its internationalization.