This award recognises the key roles foreign scientists have played in China's scientific development as well as China's growing effort to diversify its scientific partners in recent years. Professor Poliakoff is the only British scientist among the 10 winners.

Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff joined the University of Nottingham in 1979. He was awarded CBE (2008) for "Services to Sciences", and knighted in 2015 for "Services to the Chemical Sciences". He was made Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (2008), Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011) and Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society (2015). Besides, he was a Council Member of the IChemE (2009-13) and Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society (2011-16). His research interests are focused on supercritical fluids, continuous reactions and their applications to Green Chemistry.

At University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), Professor Poliakoff is an instructor for the BSc (Hons) in Chemistry 2+2 programme. In the programme, students will spend the last two years at the UK campus. Besides, the course is structured by specific content sections and some modules are taught directly by professors from UK, which effectively integrate the resources and advantages of both sides. 

As part of the communications within the University of Nottingham community, UK academics visit UNNC regularly to give public lectures and share their latest research results. Professor Poliakoff, although in his seventies, never feels bored flying back and forth to give lectures and share his experience with students in Ningbo. Once he summarised that the two key factors that gave him impetus to be a scientist were his interest and the numerous guidance from supportive instructors, and he hoped that anything he had done or shared could be helpful for students, the future scientists.

Surprisingly, Professor Poliakoff also appears on a  YouTube channel with over one million followers. Working with a professional film-maker on the  “Periodic Videos”, he often shares his knowledge in chemistry-related short videos, such as introduction to the 118 chemical elements in periodic table, and interesting little chemistry experiments. 

Dedicated to popularising basic chemical knowledge, Professor Poliakoff has appeared in more than 600 such videos since 2008.