Distinguished Professor Zhang,

Professor Gunga,

Professor  Han, the director of Sino-German Centre for Research Promotion,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

On behalf of the Fourth Military Medical University, I would like to congratulate the Sino-German Symposium on Space Life Sciences held in my University and welcome all scientists from China, Germany, the States and Switzerland. Also, I appreciate the financial support to this symposium from Sino-German Centre for Research Promotion.

During last couple of years, several remarkable and exciting achievements have been made in human space explorations, including manned spaceflight. As we all know, China sent two taikonauts into space by shenzhou 6 on Oct 12 last year. After orbiting the Earth for about five days, they returned back to the Earth safely and successfully, which marked another great achievement in China’s manned spaceflight project. With no doubt, space life sciences has made significant contributions to human space explorations. Many scientists, like you here today, have dedicated their life to this field. Therefore, we have got some basic knowledge on the physiological changes and adverse effects caused by long-duration microgravity and developed some effective multi-system countermeasures, which is extremely important to the human space flight.

This symposium is organized by professors Lifan Zhang and Hanns-Christian Gunga, from my university and Charité university respectively. We are fortunate to have many eminent scientists from China, Germany, the States and Switzerland in attendance. I believe we can get more ideas on the topics of this symposium by presenting and discussing.  

Aerospace medicine is a characteristic discipline in my university and it is unique in China. Lots of research work on space life sciences have been done last years, particularly since 1990.  I hope that we can build a comprehensive, close collaboration with scientists from Germany, the States, Switzerland and other cities of China in order to make contributions together to the peaceful utilisation of space resource by human.

Finally,  I wish Sino-German Symposium on Space Life Sciences a great success. And wish all of you a very pleasant stay in Xi’an.

Thank you.