On Feb 25, 2012, Committee on Research of XYOAA held a conference call, coordinated by Dr. Dayue Duan, the committee Co-Chair. A total of 8 people participated in this conference including Drs. Wei Chao (Class-77), Dayue Duan (Class-77), Yunping Li (Class-77), Huichun Xu (Class-90), Renhe Xu (Graduate class 84), Liming Zhang (Class-80), Weiqiang Zhao (Class-77) and Yuan-Shan Zhu (Class-77).
The following consensuses have been reached during this conference call.

1. The committee finalized the draft of the mission statements of the committee. It will be submitted to the Board of XYOAA for approval.
2. The mission statement will distinguish the education mission of the Research Committee from the Education Committee of XYOAA. The education mission of the Research Committee is research-oriented, focusing on graduate students while the mission of the Education Committee is clinical training oriented, aiming to facilitate medical student education and resident training.
3. In coordination with the 30th anniversary of Class-77 graduation, the XYOAA will launch its first symposium of “The Inaugural XiangYa Landmark International Forum on Frontiers in Medicine (XiangYa LIFFIM)”, focusing on “Translational Medicine”, at the end of September 2012 in Changsha. The Research Committee will coordinate with Class-77’s Anniversary Organization Committee to make it a smooth and enjoyable experience for all our alumni.
4. To facilitate the research activities in XiangYa, the XYOAA Research Committee will advocate our Alma Mater to hold the XiangYa LIFFIM every year from now on in coordination with the graduation anniversary of each class. The seminar series will feature different themes and invite corresponding experts around the world including alumni and non-alumni.
5. The committee understands the interest and the demand of our Alama Mater to expose the medical students to international education experience. The participants had discussed this issue and identified practical obstacles as well as potential solutions during the conference. The committee will make the following suggestions to the Xiangya administrators:
   • To maximally take the advantage of overseas alumni as a resource for the enrichment education of medical students. The enrichment education will be administered by our Alma Mater on a series of workshops at Changsha. Each workshop will emphasize a specific topic and the lectures will be given by overseas alumni with the corresponding expertise. The invited experts will be financially supported by Xiangya during the workshop course. To minimize the financial burden, on-campus housing should be provided to accommodate the invited overseas experts. . 
   • To use both public and private funding for the oversea training of medical students. 

The conference also discussed other topics and the committee will update the progress of all these activities to our alumni community in the near future.