Briefs | The Script Road announces participants

Sérgio Godinho

Man Booker Prize finalists Madeleine Thien and Graeme Macrae Burnet are among the guest authors for the sixth edition of the Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, which will take place between March 4 to 19. In a press release issued yesterday, several other participants were confirmed for the event, including Portuguese singer Sérgio Godinho, who will perform a concert at the Venetian Theatre and launch his first novel, “A Heart Too Perfect”, at the festival. Pedro Mexia, a prominent Portuguese columnist, author, and political commentator, will also participate in the event to discuss his work.

UCLA head visits Polytechnic Institute

According to a statement from the Macau Polytechnic Institute (IPM), Professor Jayathi Murthy, Dean of the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has conducted a visit to the IPM where she exchanged views with faculty staff and students from IPM’s computing program. The visit is intended to promote deeper ties between the two educational institutions, ultimately leading to “groundbreaking research work” in the field of computing technologies. An academic exchange partnership between UCLA and the IPM computing program has been in operation for the past few years, resulting in several cooperative research projects and a number of joint academic programs. One example of this cooperation is the opportunity for IPM students to undertake scientific research projects at UCLA.

Banks to launch subsidies for language studies

The Tertiary Education Services Office (GAES) revealed during a TDM radio show that the office will cooperate with the local bank industry to launch an interest-free loan program in March, directed at the city’s language programs. Director of GAES, Sou Chio Fai, said that the subsidy program will support local university graduates to study Mandarin, Portuguese or English outside of Macau. Loan applicants must pay for the programs out of pocket, and in turn the Macau government will cover the associated interest fees in the event that the students take out bank loans for their program fees. The maximum period of governmental support is two years.