Nominees for the People of Distinction | YANG Xinyi: Deepening Talent Attraction and Cultivation, Serving as a Dedicated HR Manager for Internationalized Education

Yang Xinyi currently serves as Director of the Human Resources Office at the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute (ZJU-UoE Institute). Since joining in 2016, she has spent ten years as a founding backbone member rooted in the frontline of HR services for Sino-foreign cooperative education. With ten years of dedication and pragmatic hard work, she has accompanied the institute from its zero-based start to vigorous growth—conducting in-depth internal research and comprehensive analysis of the institute's specific situation, while extensively learning HR management experience from peer institutions externally, and building up the institute's human resources management support system.

I. Pioneering and Laying the Foundation, Staying True to the Original Aspiration

Everything is difficult at the beginning. With the arrival of the first cohort of undergraduates in September 2016, fully guaranteeing teaching work was the top priority during the institute's founding period. When overseas talents, especially foreign talents, joined the institute from foreign systems, as well as foreign teaching faculty from partner institutions, they encountered three major challenges: "cumbersome procedures," "settlement support," and "cultural differences." The efficiency of resolving these three challenges directly affected whether new faculty could enter their working state happily and quickly. Yang Xinyi proactively delved into various matters such as work permits, visa processing, entry settlement, taxation, and medical insurance, coordinating with multiple levels and departments including the Zhejiang Provincial Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, the University's Office of International Cooperation, the University Hospital, and the Entry-Exit Center. She broke down information barriers, strengthened coordination and communication, streamlined service guidelines, and simplified interface procedures, so that teaching faculty could worry less, effectively providing the greatest degree of support for faculty to devote themselves wholeheartedly to teaching.

For example, the institute's foreign teacher Angelica Foggetti, having never been to China before, was quite anxious during the recruitment process about life in China and her children's education. Yang Xinyi provided her with information, held in-depth discussions with her, and together they assessed the situation. Ultimately, she assisted her in purchasing faculty housing and helped her child enroll in a Haining public kindergarten to grow up alongside Chinese children. Angelica also took pride in her child's ability to integrate into Chinese education. Growing alongside batch after batch of new faculty, Yang Xinyi continuously summarizes and sorts out the commonalities and individual characteristics of different countries, cultures, and educational backgrounds, always serving as the supportive backbone for all faculty.

As one of the faculty and staff during the institute's founding period, she continuously established and improved human resources systems, refined management standards for various categories of personnel, and laid the cornerstone of the institute's human resources management services. To balance the vacation needs of Chinese and foreign faculty and staff, she drew on the experience of the University of Edinburgh and, combined with the actual situation of Sino-foreign cooperative education, established the institute's flexible vacation system, making vacations more flexible and effectively addressing the practical issues of foreign teachers celebrating holidays and visiting family.

II. Reform and Breakthrough, Refining Determination

Talent attraction and cultivation are the core support for the institute's high-quality and sustainable development. Yang Xinyi is responsible for faculty recruitment and cultivation. Along with the institute's development, she has achieved stepped growth, driving talent work from exploratory accumulation and coordinated quality improvement toward innovative breakthroughs.

The institute began global faculty recruitment in 2016, at an early exploratory and accumulative stage of operation. Growing and advancing together with the institute, she gradually built an internationalized faculty team. In the first five years, 16 full-time faculty members were recruited cumulatively, attracting outstanding overseas young talents, with foreign faculty accounting for nearly 40%. Starting in 2021, with a holistic vision, she proactively coordinated various talent projects and application work, continuously researching the key considerations and preparation experience of various projects, integrating and optimizing various resources, and systematically improving the quality and effectiveness of talent cultivation, achieving 100% coverage of provincial-level talent projects for newly recruited overseas young talents. Since 2023, she has proactively pioneered innovation, planning ahead for personalized growth paths for young faculty, helping the institute secure talent project approvals and continuously increase high-level academic outputs. Currently, national and provincial-level talents account for over 60% of the institute, forming a preliminary profile of the institute's talent echelon and laying an important foundation for the future growth of young faculty. At the same time, she led targeted overseas talent recruitment initiatives, visiting world-top universities such as Stanford, Yale, Harvard Medical School, Heidelberg, and Cambridge with the team, and building a regular talent exchange platform relying on overseas students' associations, alumni networks, and young scholar communities, greatly enhancing the institute's overseas academic influence and talent recruitment quality. The institute has now achieved approval for overseas outstanding young talent projects for three consecutive years.

Talent attraction continuously injects fresh blood into the institute, broadens disciplinary boundaries, and promotes interdisciplinary talent cultivation; talent cultivation aims to help faculty grow into leading talents and academic benchmarks in their respective fields, attracting more outstanding faculty to join the institute, entering a virtuous cycle and achieving sustainable development. Starting in 2025, the institute explored a new model of organized talent cultivation, planning and implementing the Innovation Center Talent Cultivation Plan, further focusing on talent development, relying on major research projects, gathering top scientists and young backbone forces, collaboratively conducting key research breakthroughs, and cultivating leading talents in the field of intelligent medicine. Since 2026, led by the Human Resources Office, the institute has established three innovation centers, including Cross-Pulmonary Multi-Organ Research and Reproduction and Development, actively aligning with the university's development strategy and national needs, striving to promote regional cooperation, while expanding international cooperation and exchange, and building an open and collaborative innovation talent cultivation ecosystem.

III. Serving the Institute, Maintaining Enthusiasm

In addition, since 2023, Yang Xinyi has joined the International Campus Liaoning Admissions Team to participate in admissions work, responsible for institute admissions in the Dalian area. She actively expands student sources and improves admissions quality, helping Liaoning Province's admission ranking rise for three consecutive years—making it one of only two provinces where the institute achieved steady increases in both the lowest and highest admission scores for three consecutive years. In recognition of her admissions achievements, she was named an outstanding individual in undergraduate admissions work of the International Campus in 2024.

These solid work achievements stem from her genuine dedication and love for the cause of Sino-foreign cooperative education, and even more from her relentless drive for progress, inclusive and broad international perspective, and pragmatic style of following up on everything and implementing every task. Yang Xinyi has always practiced the work philosophy of managing through education and serving through education. She has repeatedly been rated excellent in annual assessments and was named an advanced worker of the International Campus in 2022 and 2024. She is an indispensable management backbone supporting the institute's internationalized education.