Prof Shumei Zhang heads up the Creative Science Foundations work on using Science Fiction Prototyping as a means to teach students both English as a foreign language’ and creative thinking skills. Here motivation for doing this was based on her faculty position in China, where is government policy for all university science and engineering students to acquire these skills, as to allow China to compete more successfully in world markets.

As a consequence, Shumei has pioneered the use of Science Fiction Prototyping as an instrument to teach students both creative thinking and English (especially the language associated with business and technology). In doing so she has published various papers and the definitive text book on this topic, “Learning Computer English Using a Creative Science Approach” (Tsinghua University Press,) which is used throughout China. She is interested in working with fellow teachers  who either teach Chinese students English, or would like to use Shumei’s Science Function method in other languages (if you would be interested in collaborating with Shumei, please contact her). Currently, she is a full Professor of Computer Science at Shijiazhuang University, (China). She holds a BSc. from Hebei Normal University (China), an MSc from Wuhan University of Technology (China) and a PhD. from the University of Ulster (UK). Her research interests mostly concern AI and machine learning, having interests that span areas of healthcare and human behaviour analysis having published numerous paper and managed several projects in this area.