Music
So I would like to move to the second part of today's class.
I would like to give you an overview of our course,
Water and Civilization.
So why we need to take this course?
I think I give three readings.
The first one, if you want to become a future leader,
you need to take this course.
Transform from a passive listener to an active problem solver.
So during this class, you also need to learn how to solve the problem.
You also bring your wisdom to think about the actions and solutions to the world problem.
this can train you to be the future leader,
the future leader.
The second reading, if you want to do research in the future,
as this can provide you academic advancement.
Always, a lot of students, they ask my help,
how could you write me a recommendation letter
when they apply for a university abroad?
And also you need to prepare your CV, right?
Need to prepare your CV to apply for other universities.
And then if they can feel some very important issues
in your CV, they think, oh, this is a very good student.
And then in the future, you can see, I take this course.
This course is given by a group of world leaders
leaders of hydrologists, of environmental scientists,
and then when they look at your CV they think,
wow, these students, when they are very young,
they have taken such a very important course.
So then we see, yes, to your application.
So this can help you for your academic career.
And certainly there are other career opportunities like you want to look for jobs in China or
even to look for jobs in other countries.
This can give you a lot of opportunities.
And you will have the chance to learn from many international, well-known scholars.
And then in the future you'll say, oh, I want to apply for your PhD study, like I want to
be your PhD student.
You can write an email and say, oh, I listened to your talk in our university.
This can give you more opportunities for your career, right?
So to shape a sustainable world future with the power of youth.
And the main objective of this course is to develop and deliver a high quality introductory
course on water taught by world leading experts from around the globe.
I will show you some lectures a moment later.
She will say, wow, these people are really great.
And we also try to use advanced infrastructure in AI to create engaging and adaptive learning
experience.
We try to use AI to help you.
And also when you do your homework, you also need to use AI.
A key innovative goal is to use AI to capture the swarm intelligence of a large student body like you.
So many people you are together and we have a homework that all of you will work together for the assignment.
So to collaborate, collaboratively explore solutions for unsolved water-related questions.
So these are the objectives of this course. And then you may ask,
how did you select the professors in this class? How? I can show you how. It's really a very complex
process. It took me so much time. I started to prepare this course from
during last year. I showed you the international workshop on us what future
that is the start of the idea. I talked to the people there we should we should
prepare a course, right? And then we try to use AI to help this course. So with the help
of Alexander Zehnder, and we first give the outline of different sessions of the lesson.
And then for each session, I put the key words in AI,
like in deep-seek.
Like, if I want to look for people
to talk about the origin of water,
then I put the origin of water.
And then I ask deep-seek, who are the best professors
in the world that can talk about the origin of water?
I will ask in DeepSeek.
It will give me a list of professors, seven, eight,
10 people.
Then in the second step, I need to check the CV of each person.
So it's a lot of work for me.
It's really a lot of work.
I need to check.
Some people I know, some people I don't know.
I need to check the CV of each candidate.
and then to check whether this person is really
the right people to talk about this topic.
I select a few candidates in my list.
And then the next step, I need to contact the people.
So because some of them, I never know them,
I never met them, I need to write an email to them,
I need to send them an email and explain why we need
to give this talk, this course to the students,
and I need to show the structure of the course
of events specifically for this session.
I think you are the best professor in the world
to talk about this issue.
I need to ask whether you would like to help us
to give this course, this lecture.
Now quite a few, they are too busy, you know,
famous professors, professors are extremely busy.
Every day a lot of work.
So many people they think no.
No, I'm interested in this course.
I think this is a very important course for students,
but I do not have time.
There is a case, I need to turn to another person.
I need to go to the second person,
I need to start the process again, the same process.
I need to explain why we need to give this course
and how about the audience and how about the structure
of the course, why I think you are the best person
to talk about this course.
Then I need to explain again.
And then, they reject me again because professors,
particularly I want to find the best people.
The best professors are always busy.
So I get a lot of rejections in the past year.
So this is a complex,
so after this complex process,
finally we found the person to give the talk.
It's very, very time consuming, really very time consuming.
Even for today I'm still writing emails.
We still have some sessions,
we haven't confirmed the professors.
So you ask how many?
We have already invited 19 professors,
19 professors already confirmed, I mean confirmed.
We said yes to give course in our class.
But I think we will have more because we still have a few sessions.
We haven't confirmed the professors.
So among these 19 professors, 10 of them are the academicians from different countries.
Academicians in China are Yuan.
So 19 professors among them are academicians.
So the result is a world class course created by experts from leading institutions such
as ETH Zurich.
This is the very famous university.
I don't know whether you heard about this university.
Yes, ETH Zurich.
And it's ranked as the top six university in the world.
It's also the home university of Einstein.
It's also the university for my PhD study.
So it's a very famous university.
And also from UC Berkeley, to Delft,
from these top universities.
We have professors.
So the main mission is to explore
the profound and complex interactions
between water resources and the evolution of human civilization.
So water, human civilization.
And then we will talk about the origin of water, the rise of civilizations,
climate change, health, water security, water, energy, food, climate change,
sustainability, management, all these issues. In one class, you will learn about all aspects of water.
So we will have 10 themes in this course. The first theme is the origin distribution and the unique sense of earth's water cycle,
the earth's water cycle, hydrological cycle.
The second theme, how managing water
boosts agricultural engineering and human culture.
And the third theme, the critical link
between water pollution, disease, and changing climates.
And the fourth theme, balancing what demands
across society, nature, and geopolitical conflicts.
And the fifth theme, the physics, history,
and future potential of hydropower.
So for our university, we are called the
North China University of Water Resources
and Electric Power, that is hydropower, right?
Yeah.
The sixth theme, measuring the hidden water
behind the goose, we consume every day.
the waterfall print.
And the seventh seam, navigating the complex tug
and a wall between farming, power grids, and a sieving water.
And the eighth theme, the cost, rights, market forces
behind global water distribution.
That is about the economics of water, the water market also.
And then the ninth theme, a holistic, sustainable approach
to balancing stakeholders in what management
that is about management.
And then the last theme, building climate resilience
and circular water economies for humans future.
So these are the themes for our course.
And then for our course, we need to develop a very good course.
So we need a lot of people to help us.
In order to do that, we established two committees.
The first committee is the advisory committee, including Thavin, world famous scholars all
over the world.
Some of them I will introduce later because they are also the lecturer for this course.
And in addition to the lecturer, like this Mark van Loosdrecht, he will not give a lecturer
for our course.
I'm not sure.
We haven't confirmed.
He is a very famous professor in the field of wastewater treatment.
He is working in TU Delft, and he is also a member of the
the Academy of Arts and Science in the Netherlands.
And Fabio, he is the editor-in-chief for the journal Nature Water,
a very famous journal for water, Nature Water.
So he is the editor-in-chief.
And for Salvatore Grimaldi, he is the current president
of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences.
So last year he came to our university in June.
At that time, he was the president-elect,
but now he is the president.
the president.
So we also have an executive committee, including myself.
And Alexander Zehnder, I will introduce him a moment later.
Peter Gleick and Garn for soon.
So this is the executive committee.
And we have a lot group of lecturers.
I will give a brief introduction
about a few lectures, myself.
Yeah, you know my research area,
Hydrology Water Resources, ecological restoration.
If you want to know me more,
you can check in the internet.
I will not go to the details for myself.
Then Alexander Zender.
He's the former president of the ETH Board.
I mentioned the ETH-Suriq.
This is the top six university in the world.
And the ETH Board includes two universities in Switzerland.
One is ETH Surich, and there is another one.
And also include four resources institutes
founded by the Swiss government.
So this is the ETH Board.
and Professor Zinder was the former president of ETH Board
in Switzerland.
He's a member of Swiss Academy of Engineering Science,
a member of academia, European.
He's also a member of the Royal Academy of Arts
and Science in the Netherlands.
He's also a foreign member of the Russia Academy of Science.
So very famous professor.
And he's interested in nexus of water, food,
and climate change, and also environmental biotechnology
and water security.
So he spent a lot of time to define the cause.
And he wrote how many pages, 14, 16,
how many pages for the description of our course.
76, he wrote 76 pages of description about our course.
He wrote the description himself.
So he helped me a lot and he came to our university twice
to discuss with me how to design this course,
how to develop this course, who we should invite.
So he specifically came to our university twice
for this issue, for this cause.
So he played a very important role in shaping the cause.
And Peter Glyche, also very famous professor,
he's the co-founder and president, Emeritus.
Emeritus means past, the past man,
the past president for Pacific Institute in the US.
He's also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences,
and a MacArthur, a genius fellow.
He's interested in the interaction of water
climate change and security.
He introduced a lot of terms that are widely used
in our water community, like he introduced
the soft path of water, peak water.
So these concepts are from him.
And he also advances solutions to the world's most
pressing water challenges.
So he is a big professor, a big scientist in the world.
I read a lot of articles from him
when I did my PhD study.
So even when I work on my PhD study,
I read a lot of papers from him.
He really a very influential scientist in the world.
And Professor Dalian Chen, he's currently a professor
at the Tsinghua University, but he worked in Sweden
for more than 30 years.
And he's a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
and also a member of many academies of sciences
in other countries.
And he is also a foreign member
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He is,
he's in treated in climate change
and to view the earth as a complex,
in the next eight system,
environmental change in the Tibetan plateau
and climate change,
Impass on what risks and disaster resilience.
So he's a world famous professor on climate research.
And his supervisor is a Nobel Prize winner.
So Professor Hubert Savenije,
he used to be a professor
at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
He used to be the president of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, and he
is interested in hydrology and water management, particularly viewing the hydrological system
as a living, evolving entity.
So also a very famous hydrologist in the world.
And he will come to our university in April because he will give talks twice for our
course and one course will be given online and another one he will come to our class
and give the course.
Very funny person, very smart person also.
So he will come in April or May?
Which month?
April.
April, yeah.
So Jeffrey McDonnell, also a famous professor, very famous man, from Canada, University of
Saskatchewan, very difficult to pronounce this.
He's a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the winner of the International Hydrology
Prize.
He is really a very important person for isotope hydrology.
What leading scientists for isotope hydrology?
同位素水文学
And also groundwater and water security.
Slobodin Simonovic.
He used to be a professor for Western University in Canada.
A member of the Royal Society of Canada,
a member of the Canadian Royal Academy of Engineering,
a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
So his interest in integrated world resources management,
flood risk reduction and disaster resilience,
application of systems thinking and hydroinformatics
to world challenges.
He came to our university twice last year.
The first time he attended the International Workshop
as well as Future, and the second time
he gave a course to a few students on systems thinking.
So he is a very good person to use the system thinking
in water management.
And Professor Jim Ma is a professor
in Harbin Institute of Technology in China.
His academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering
and also a director for the State Key Laboratory
of Urban Water Resource and Environment.
So he is also a very famous person for wastewater treatment
and for sustainable urban water systems
and wastewater reuse and multi-functional
called coagulation Technology.
So I have known him for a long time,
how many years ago, 2005, 20 years ago.
So at that time he was already very famous
for this water treatment.
So also a well-known scientist in the world.
And Professor Chong Yu Xu,
a professor at the University of Oslo,
and he became a professor in our university
Last year, last December,
so he's a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science
and the latest member of the Norwegian Academy
of Technology Sciences.
He's interested in hydrological modeling,
regional evapotranspiration,
and the impact of global changes on water systems.
So also a well-known hydrologist in the world.
And Bob Constanza, a professor from the University College
of London in UK.
He's a member of the Academy of Social Science in Australia
and also a member of the Royal Society of Arts.
And he's interested in ecological economics,
ecosystem services, and the systems ecology,
and integrated social ecological modeling.
He's called the father of ecosystem services.
So he's the most well-known people,
most well-known scientists for ecosystem services.
So through my introduction,
you can see we have a lot of world leading scientists
who will give talks in our class, right?
From different countries, really leading scientists.
You will learn from them.
And for our course is general educational elective course.
In total, there will be 32 hours from week one to week 16.
And the total credits are two.
And this course is for freshmen and sophomores
open to all majors.
already 1,369 students have registered
from 15 colleagues across three campuses.
So this year, we will open this course
only to students in our university.
And next year, we plan to open this course
to all universities in China.
And then later, Vivian opens this course to all universities in the world.
We try to put the material in the future to a platform that all over the world, the people,
they can use the material.
So the course is designed not only for the students in our university, but also for students
all over the world, and also even for the public.
So just today, the president of Kazakhstan,
the National University of Irrigation and Water Resources,
he sent me a email and he wanted to listen to this course.
But this year because we were not open
to outside of our university,
but I will send the video to her in the future.
in the future.
So I sense this is really a very luxurious course
for our students.
And we will have the course every Wednesday from 19
to 8.40 in the evening.
Also we have classes in three campuses.
And we also have assessment, 50% is based on after class assignments.
So for the individual coursework, they are all choice questions.
And the key is to understand the core concepts and the lecture takeaways.
And the other lecturers, they also will explain to you how to work on the assignments.
And at the end, we also have the group project.
You need to submit short ideas to complete a human AI collaborative report.
for the short ideas less than 50 words,
and then we will use the system thinking
to analyze the real what issues.
So this is the group project, 50%.
And you also need the assistant of AI.
So you will have the AI cost tutor
to answer your questions anytime,
based strictly on the course materials
and also what's your weakness, complex concepts.
And the AI powered swarm intelligent project
to solve the complex open-ended problems.
So your rule is to provide short ideas,
to evaluate the idea and also to vote.
And then the AI agent will process
thousands of input from you, more than 1,300 students.
So process thousands of inputs,
extract more proposals, and draft the final report.
And then the goal is to combine human creativity
with AI to solve complex problems, open-ended world problems.
So this is a test.
We try to test how to integrate your ideas with AI
to solve the world problems.
I think because we have such a large body of students,
and it's interesting to give a try.
So this is about the introduction about the course.
I think this will be a very exciting course
Because we have such a large body of students, more than 1,300 students together to work
on our course.
And you also need to do the assignment together, not individually, but together to work on
the project.
This is also interesting, it's also new.
And also, I think more important, you will learn from the world's best minds, the most
intelligent people in the world.
They will teach you about all aspects of water.
I think this is a really excellent opportunity to learn from top professors all over the
world.
And I also think this will be very useful for your future career.
So I think the Water and Civilization course will open your mind to the world, to really
connect you to the world.
So I hope you can enjoy this course.
And certainly if you have any questions, you can ask me, you can ask AI, you can ask the
assistants in our class. And after my talk, our assistant, they will also teach you how to work
on the project, on the assignment, and also to teach you how to work together, collectively,
for the assignment. So, to summarize, I hope you will enjoy this course, and I hope this will bring
you excitement and I hope this course will be very useful for your career. Thank you.