On the afternoon of December 19^th, 2016, President Jianhua Lin met Professor John E. Hopcroft, the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science at Cornell University and the recipient of 1986 ACM A.M. Turing Award. Wen Gao, the Director of Department of Information and Engineering Science of PKU, Ru Huang, Dean of School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) of PKU, Bing Xie, Associate Dean of EECS and Xiaotie Deng, Chair Professor of the Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies (CFCS), Peking University attended the event.

Professor John Hopcroft expressed his gratitude to Peking University for the hospitality. He briefly introduced his early research works, shared his experience in teaching and training young computer science talents in China in recent years, and put forward constructive opinions on undergraduate education and teaching evaluation, academic evaluation, and young faculty training in universities in China. And expressed his willingness to contribute to the improvement of the quality of computer science talents in universities in China, including Peking University.

President Jianhua Lin meets Professor John E. Hopcroft

President Jianhua Lin highly affirmed Professor Hopcroft's groundbreaking achievements in the field of algorithms and data structures, and expressed his strong recognition of Professor Hopcroft's innovative ideas in undergraduate education. President Jianhua Lin welcomed Professor John Hopcroft for his visiting and participation in the construction of the Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies, Peking University. Jianhua Lin said that Peking University will strongly support Professor Hopcroft's work and hoped to use this as an opportunity to comprehensively enhance the level of training students at Peking University. President Jianhua Lin also introduced the comprehensive reforms currently underway at Peking University. After the meeting, President Jianhua Lin presented a souvenir to Professor Hopcroft.

Founded in December 2017, the Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies (CFCS), Peking University (PKU), China, is a university new initiative co-founded by Professors John Hopcroft (Turing Awardee) and Wen Gao (CAE, ACM/IEEE Fellow). The center aims at developing the excellence on two fronts: research and education. On the research front, the center will provide a world-class research environment, where innovation and impactful research is the central aim, measured by professional reputation among world scholars, not by counting the number of publications and research funding. On the education front, the center deeply involves in the Turing Class, an elite undergraduate program that draws the cream of the crop from the PKU undergraduate talent pool. New curriculum and pedagogy are designed and practiced in this program, with the aim to cultivate a new generation of computer scientists/engineers that are solid in both theories and practices.