04 Nov 2026
Recently, Oliver Hart, a 2016 Nobel laureate in economics, met with faculty members and students at Tonghai Hall on ECUST’s Fengxian Campus. The event, themed “Meet a Nobel Laureate in Person”, was the first in the School of Business’s “Zhixing-Xianju Dongfang” lecture series.
Hart is a professor at Harvard University and an honorary professor at ECUST. He also serves as director of the Oliver Hart Research Center of Contracts and Governance at ECUST and chair of the School of Business’s Strategic Advisory Committee. More than 200 faculty members and students attended the event, which was moderated by Chunyang Pan, vice dean of the School of Business.
Professor Hart addressed questions from students on a range of topics, including how to improve research efficiency, the opportunities and challenges facing economics in complex environments, and how young scholars can choose their research directions. He encouraged students to focus on real-world problems and urged them to build a solid academic foundation while maintaining their intellectual curiosity.
Chunyang Pan highlighted Professor Hart’s longstanding ties with ECUST. He noted that Hart is not only a world-renowned economist but also a witness and contributor to the development of the School of Business. Pan encouraged students to apply the insights gained from the event to their studies and future research.
At the end of the lecture, student representatives presented Professor Hart with flowers. Tongyu Wang, a PhD candidate at the School of Business and a Zhuanghe city-level inheritor of paper-cutting, a national intangible cultural heritage, presented him with a commemorative paper-cut artwork she had created herself.
In the future, the lecture series will continue to invite renowned scholars and industry leaders from China and abroad to deliver lectures that combine intellectual depth with personal insight.
