Transdisciplinarity: The Path to Sustainable Engineering

Professor Raffaella Ocone OBE FRSE FREng (President, Institution of Chemical Engineering) and Professor Richard A. Williams CBE FRSE FREng FTSE (Principal and Vice Chancellor, Heriot-Watt University) have pleasure in inviting you to a

Public Lecture

“Transdisciplinarity: The Path to Sustainability”,

To be delivered by Professor Jinghai Li, FRS, FREng, FIChemE, a world-renowned scientist and engineer whose distinguished career has made him one of the leading figures in Chemical Engineering worldwide.

As the world faces increasingly complex global challenges and a shift in scientific paradigms, every field of engineering stands at a critical crossroad where opportunities and challenges coexist. In this lecture, Professor Li will explore how engineering and basic sciences can work in synergy, how disciplinary barriers can be broken down to foster knowledge sharing, and what common knowledge gaps persist across engineering fields. Drawing on his extensive experience and practice in chemical engineering, he will illustrate these ideas through a series of insightful case studies.

Professor Li graduated from the Department of Thermal Engineering at the Harbin Institute of Technology in 1982 and obtained his PhD from the Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1987. He has served as Vice President of CAS and, since 2018, as President of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). His pioneering work on multiphase complex systems led to the establishment of Mesoscience, a new scientific field. He is an International Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering (2011) and the Royal Society (2023).

We warmly invite staff, students and professional friends to join us for what promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking event.

Attendance is free but by ticket only.

Date: Tuesday 2 December 2025

Time: 17:30 – 19:45

Venue: Adam Smith’s Panmure House, 4 Lochend Close, EH88BL, Edinburgh

The House will open at 17:15 with a canapé and drinks reception from 17:30, before the lecture commences.

Since Panmure House is an intimate venue, places are limited. Should you no longer be able to attend we ask that you notify us in advance.

Comprehensive directions to Panmure House can be found on their website. Please notify us should you have any access requirements.

About Panmure House

Panmure House is the final remaining home of Adam Smith, philosopher and 'father of modern economics.' Originally built in 1691, Smith occupied the House between 1778 and 1790, during which time he completed the final editions of his master works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Other great luminaries and thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment visited Smith regularly at the House across this period. In 2008, Edinburgh Business School & Heriot-Watt University undertook to rescue this historic building from dereliction. Following a 10-year, £5.6m renovation, Panmure was formally opened in November 2018. Today the house is a centre of excellence for the study of contemporary economics, a place of reflection on the legacy of Adam Smith, and an intellectual property for social and economic debate.

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