The opening ceremony of the Stanford-USTC-MIT Geoscience Camp 2015 was held at the University of Science and Technology of China on 7 September 2015. Thirteen graduates/postdocs from Stanford and MIT have come to participate in this event, together with seventeen graduates from USTC and five invited graduates from other universities in China. The main goal of this geoscience camp is to provide a cultural and academic exchange platform for students and faculty members from the three top universities.　

Prof. YAO Huajian, Associate Dean of School of Earth and Space Sciences of USTC, hosted the opening ceremony. Prof. JIANG Yi, vice board director of the USTC, addressed to welcome all the participants sincerely. He briefly introduced the basic facts of USTC to the foreign SUMers, and sincerely wished the SUM 2015 a great success. Prof. ZHANG Jie, Executive Chairman of the SUM organizing committee, reviewed the history of SUM program. He also advised the SUMers to build a closer relationship with each other, and to strengthen the friendship between these three universities.Prof. WANG Yuming, Dean of School of Earth and Space Sciences of USTC, delivered his best wishes to the success of SUM 2015, which theme is about Geosciences this year. Prof. Dale Morgan from MIT expressed his great appreciation to the SUM program and efforts, which promoted advanced level of academic exchange. He talked about the development and future of geoscience as well, pointing out that earthquake prediction will be a field worth of researching in China.　

 After the opening speeches, the audience watched a video produced by the SUMers. Then three students from three universities went on the stage to introduce the group members and universities, including Jason Paul Chang from Stanford, Eva Golos from MIT and Ningyu Sun from USTC.　

At last, every SUMer signed their names on the SUM flag, which marked the ending of the ceremony.　　

This year, SUM program will organize two academic meetings during the camp in China. They include Geoscience Symposium at USTC on Sept 8th and SEG-USTC Conference in Beijing on Sept 13th, which will allow participants to interact mutually and with scientists on professional subjects. All the participants will present their research results. Students from many other universities in China shall attend the meeting as well. 

Besides academic exchange activities, SUM 2015 program is going to offer open dialogue opportunity between visiting participants and USTC students on a variety of topics. They will also visit USTC start-up companies, and take a geologic field trip to Yellow Mountain. They will be also engaged in ping-pong competition, and learning Chinese calligraphy.　

Stanford-USTC-MIT (SUM) is an academic and culture exchange platform for faculty members and students from Stanford, USTC, and MIT.  It was first launched in 2012 in Geophysics program. In 2013, it expands to physics, chemistry and geophysics with faculty members from the three universities as the participants. In 2014, SUM program brought students from business schools of the three universities and explored entrepreneurship. SUM is going to continue its efforts in more academic fields in future. 

(USTC News Center, Office of International Cooperation, School of Earth and Space Sciences )

For more information: http://sum.ustcnet./