Dr. Samuel Jonson Sutanto

On the second week of October 2025, my colleagues from WUR and I visited China to strengthen our collaborations with the China Agricultural University (CAU) and Chinese Agricultural Academy of Science (CAAS).

Our visit to Beijing involved three events. First, we have continued our long-term collaboration with CAU through the Agricultural Green Development (AGD) program. We discussed potential research topics for AGD phase 3 and explored opportunities for sandwich PhD projects. Second, we joined the celebration of CAU 120th anniversary, which brought together many distinguish guests from around the world. Third, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between WUR and Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), note that CAAS is just one institution of CAS, was signed by our rector Prof. Caroline Kroez.

During our stay, we also attended a WUR alumni event organized by the Dutch Embassy in Beijing. It was inspiring to hear many wonderful stories from alumni about their time studying at WUR and how it shaped their careers.

On a personal note, this trip to Beijing was particularly meaningful for me. I had not been involved in the AGD program, as I assumed it was limited to specific research groups. This trip, however, changes my perspective showing that anyone can contribute to AGD as long as their research aligns with CAU’s priorities. I proposed three potential research topics that could connect the expertise of ESC with CAU’s interests, focusing on crop modeling, nutrient modeling, and machine learning applications. I was delighted that one of these topics was selected by a CAU researcher for further development, and I look forward to building this collaboration in the near future.

Another highlight was meeting with natural hazard group led by Prof Enke Liu from CAAS. Until now, our communication had been limited to email exchanges, so it was great to meet him in person, and his team. I was pleased to discover that our research interests closely align, and I am optimistic about future joint projects in the field of natural hazards and climate impacts.

Below I presented some pictures taken during my trip to Beijing. The first picture (top) shows the AGD meeting participants both from WUR and CAU including PhD students. The second picture (below) shows WUR rector giving speech during CAU’s 120th anniversary celebration. Last the third picture shows me presenting my research at CAAS.