Recently, the National Education Fund Management Committee has published The Notice on Confirmation of the Projects to be Funded in the 2024 International Cooperative Program for Innovative Talents.” WHSU has been approved for the first time to run an International Cooperative Program for Innovative Talents funded by National Education Fund Management Committee (“the Innovative Talents Program” for short). It’s WHSU’s first breakthrough in terms of state-level international cooperative programs for training innovative talents.

WHSU’s approved project, “The Program of Training Outstanding Innovative Talents in Youth Sports Training and Management,” is run by the School of Sports Training and headed by Professor Liu Mingyi. The duration of the program is three years. From 2024, WHSU will be able to select and send two visiting scholars and two joint PhD candidates to partnership colleges overseas for learning and research. The National Education Fund will provide the fee for a round trip between China and the partnership colleges and scholarship for the duration of the funded program for each scholar or student.

Getting approved to run the Innovative Talents Program is a great breakthrough for WHSU’s efforts to achieve international cooperation. The state-level platform for international cooperation lays a firm foundation for long-term, stable research cooperation between WHSU and top universities overseas, provides elite talents for WHSU’s efforts to run academic subjects included in the "Double First-Class" project, and helps the University realize its goal of becoming a “domestic and world leading” application-and-research-oriented sports university. Established by the National Education Fund, the Innovative Talents Program aims to serve China’s national strategies, promote practical academic communication and research cooperation between domestic universities and overseas leading universities and research institutions, and particularly support the “Cooperation Among Leading Universities” project as well as the “Cooperation Among Superior Subjects” project in the mutually superior academic subjects between China and other countries, so as to train innovative, urgently-needed, and comprehensive international talents.