On June 9, Sari Lindblom, President of the University of Helsinki, led a delegation to visit Nanjing University. Tan Tieniu, Chair of NJU CPC Council and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences met with the delegation on Xianlin campus.

Tan Tieniu welcomed President Lindblom and her delegation and expressed heartfelt gratitude for the University of Helsinki's sustained support of the Nanjing-Helsinki Institute in Atmospheric and Earth System Sciences (Nanjing-Helsinki Institute). Tan introduced NJU’s latest developments in discipline development, research innovation, international cooperation, and campus construction. He emphasized that NJU has always placed great importance on international collaboration. Based on the long-term collaboration between the two universities in atmospheric sciences, the Nanjing-Helsinki Institute actively addresses global issues such as climate change and sustainable development, aiming to cultivate outstanding talents with exceptional expertise, innovative spirit, and international vision. It has become a model for higher education cooperation between China and Finland. He noted that the Institute has successfully graduated its first cohort of 33 master's students and expressed hope that the Institute, based in the Suzhou campus, will take on the responsibility of developing and expanding emerging engineering disciplines, achieving even greater teaching and research results. Tan Tieniu hoped that the two universities will continue expanding strategic cooperation, exploring the addition of a data science major at the institute, jointly organizing high-level forums, and strengthening faculty and student exchanges. The social and economic development of Suzhou and Jiangsu will undoubtedly provide strong impetus for deeper collaboration between the two universities.

Lindblom thanked NJU for the warm reception and shared her impressions from visiting the Suzhou campus. She stated that the University of Helsinki has always valued its cooperation with NJU. She was delighted to see the thriving development of the Nanjing-Helsinki Institute, which emphasizes interdisciplinary integration, focusing on major issues concerning the human living environment such as climate change and sustainable development, and solving important global problems through interdisciplinary collaboration, which is of great significance. She affirmed that the University of Helsinki will continue to support the Institute's development and hopes that the two universities will further strengthen academic exchanges and visits among faculty, optimize the international talent cultivation model, and jointly advance Sino-Finnish research cooperation to achieve greater progress.

Kai Nordlund, Vice President of the University of Helsinki; Olli Suominen, Education and Science Counsellor at the Embassy of Finland in Beijing; NJU Vice President Lu Yanqing, Assistant President Ding Aijun, and representatives from the International Affairs Office and Nanjing-Helsinki Institute attended the meeting.