On the morning of 13 October 2026, at the invitation of the Master's and Doctoral Programmes in Arts of the Faculty of Innovation and Design, and the Macau Urban Music Research Centre, City University of Macau, Professor Guan Xiaohong, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IEEE Fellow, delivered an academic lecture in Room G2024, Golden Dragon Campus, City University of Macau. The lecture was titled "The Integration of Arts and Sciences and the Cultivation of Innovative Talents-Scientific Research and Artistic Practice on Music Intelligence Quantification and Brain Science Cognition". Po-Hsun WANG, Executive Associate Dean of the Faculty of Innovation and Design, Dai Dingcheng, Programme Director of the Master's and Doctoral Programmes in Arts, together with faculty, students and scholars from various sectors, attended the event, where an intense academic atmosphere prevailed.

Academician Guan Xiaohong is Professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University and a distinguished expert in systems engineering. His long-term research covers optimization of networked systems and cyberspace information security, and he has received numerous major research awards including the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Award. Meanwhile, he has devoted sustained attention to the integration of science and arts, advancing cutting-edge cross-disciplinary research on music intelligence quantification and music brain science, and exploring the value of artistic thinking for nurturing innovative talents in science and technology.

In the keynote lecture, Academician Guan presented research on the intersection of arts and sciences, systematically introducing studies on music intelligence quantification. Drawing on cases such as melodic intervals and power-law distribution, he illustrated the value of mathematical models for analysing inherent organizational rules in music. He reported multiple advances at the intersection of music and brain science, including quantitative model construction, in-situ listening experiments and neural coding research, demonstrating broad prospects for multi-disciplinary collaborative music research. Comparing modal music traditions from China and abroad, he presented practical work on AI-aided transcription and reconstruction of guqin jianzipu (characteristic tablature), noting that while digital technologies empower the inheritance of traditional music, many practical issues remain open for investigation. He also shared pedagogical practices from the concert series Convergence of Arts and Science. Combining science popularisation with musical performance, this initiative leverages artistic thinking to stimulate young researchers' capacity for cross-disciplinary innovation.

Participants raised active questions on frontiers of arts-science integration. In his closing remarks, Professor Dai Dingcheng summarised the core themes of the lecture as "arts and science, theory and practice, rationality and sensibility". He highly commended the report for breaking barriers between the liberal arts and sciences and offering fresh academic perspectives to attendees, and expressed anticipation for continued academic and aesthetic education collaboration. This academic event establishes a platform for dialogue between science and musical humanities. It inspires young researchers to transcend disciplinary boundaries by integrating rigorous scientific logic with vivid artistic thinking. The lecture carries important implications for Macau's urban music cultural development and advanced musicology talent training, and offers valuable references for the development of arts-technology cross-disciplines in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Article by Hu Yiming, Doctor of Philosophy in Arts (The Study of Chinese Music History).