On April 22, IDG and Tsinghua University sealed an agreement on jointly setting up IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Tsinghua University. IDG will donate US $10 million to Tsinghua University to establish IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Tsinghua University. Furthermore, IDG China and the Management Team of IDG Capital Partners will set up “IDG China Foundation” and “Harmony Foundation” to render long-term support and financial aid to this institute.

Patrick McGovern, Founder and Chairman of IDG and Founder of McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and GU Binglin, Principal of Tsinghua University and SONG Jun, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the Education Foundation of Tsinghua, signed the agreement together. Lore Harp McGovern, Co-Founder of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Robert Desimone, Director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Hugo Shong, Executive Vice President of IDG, Chairman of IDG Greater China, SHI Yigong, Executive Vice Dean of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University, LIU Guosong and ZHONG Yi, professors from the Neuroscience Department of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University, were present at the signing ceremony.

In his speech, Mr. McGovern said, “My wife and I are very pleased to sign the agreement on setting up the Institute for Brain Research at the time of the centenary celebration of Tsinghua University. After the founding of the Institute for Brain Research, the dream of understanding the human brain is now within our grasp. I am confident that, in the next decade, the Institute will obtain a series of achievements on mental disease treatment. We are proud to play a part in making this happen.”

Principal GU Binglin expressed his gratitude to the McGoverns’ and IDG’s generous contributions to the establishment of the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Tsinghua University. He hopes that in the years ahead, Tsinghua University and the McGoverns, IDG and McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT will make bumper harvests from the cooperation.

IDG is the world's leading technology media, events, research and venture investment company. Mr. and Mrs. McGovern have been dedicated to the education, science and technology research, particularly in the area of brain researches. In the year of 2000, Mr. and Mrs. McGovern donated US $350 million to MIT to establish the McGovern Institute for Brain Research for enhancing the exchanges among human beings and researches on human brain working mechanisms and relevant diseases such as autism, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, language barriers, etc. In January 2008, the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT reached an agreement on academic exchanges with the help of Hugo Shong, Executive Vice President of IDG, and jointly sponsored the Academic Symposium on Brain Science. The McGoverns visited Tsinghua University in 2006, 2008 and 2010 respectively to make studies in the Tsinghua University’s progress in the human brain researches.

With its academic advantages, Tsinghua University has built up research groups on human brain including neurobiology, neural engineering, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and clinical medical researches on cranial nerve diseases. The cooperation with IDG symbolizes a new step of cooperation between a world famous enterprise and a first-class science institution in the research area of human brains.