LONDON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- A delegation of senior leaders from China's Southeast University (SEU) have visited the University of Birmingham to explore setting up a joint research institute.

Led by Executive Vice President Professor Wang Baoping, delegates from the Nanjing-based university visited Birmingham to discuss how a joint institute might benefit research collaboration in biomedical engineering and big data.

The delegates from the university met their British counterparts in computational biology and biomedics, as well as discussing collaboration opportunities in Chemical Engineering.

Discussions also took place with experts from the School of Engineering to enhance collaboration in Electrical Engineering in both joint education and research.

The SEU delegation was welcomed by University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood, the university said Friday.

In a welcoming speech, Eastwood said: "We already enjoy a close collaboration with SEU and we believe that establishing a joint institute could lead to high-quality research that has global impact."

"We very much hope to establish research and teaching collaborations that allow Chinese students to pursue academic achievement at a top British university, whilst our academics help to solve major health problems facing China and the wider world."

Discussions also focussed on how the two universities might collaborate in the proposed Nanjing Health Data Center, an initiative led by SEU to establish a large-scale biomedical big data infrastructure platform in Nanjing.

Wang said SEU is establishing a large-scale biomedical big data infrastructure platform in Nanjing. "SEU has been made aware of the great capability of University of Birmingham in this area, especially through the Center for Computational Biology, and is very keen to establish links for both setting up the system in Nanjing and for future research collaboration."

The University of Birmingham recently joined the UK's prestigious Alan Turing Institute, which was set up to advance the world-changing potential of data science.