Renowned Harvard scholar appointed Tsinghua guest professor

BEIJING, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The Beijing-based Tsinghua University recently engaged Prof. John Holdren of Harvard University as guest professor at the prestigious "Chinese MIT."

Holdren, director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, was invited to the professorship for his expertise on climate change and huge global influence.

Holdren's three-year appointment with Tsinghua is with its School of Public Policy and Management, the Harvard Belfer Center said in a news release.

Tsinghua enjoys the fame of the best engineering educator in China. Many Tsinghua graduates are holding key leadership positions in the Chinese government and the industrial sector.

"I'm deeply honored by this appointment," said Holdren, who served former President Bill Clinton as a member of the presidential science and technology advisors. He has partnered with Tsinghua, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to conduct in-depth research on Chinese energy and environmental policy.

He said he would deepen the ongoing collaboration among Harvard, the Woods Hole Research Center which he is also affiliated to, Tsinghua and other Chinese institutions on how the United States and China could work together to address the challenge of climate change.

"The key question is whether and how industrialized and developing countries alike can create and sustain prosperity for all of their citizens without wrecking the climate with greenhouse-gas emissions from energy supply and tropical deforestation," Holdren said.

Trained in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics at MIT and Stanford, Holdren, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), focuses his research interests in causes and consequences of global environmental change, energy and resource options, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation.

Holdren advised former Vice President Al Gore on the slide show that gradually evolved into the Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth, " which contributed to Gore's winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.