Beneficiary Student Story of Ni Qinghe: Go from Near to Far and Keep Working Hard
07 June 2022
On May 2022, Ni Qinghe, Aerospace Engineering 2022 Class student of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Outstanding Graduate of Zhejiang Province, won the Dream Scholarship Science and Technology Innovations Individual Award and accepted the interview of the Education Foundation. The experience of publishing papers in SCIE and obtaining an utility model patent at the undergraduate period made Ni Qinghe stand out in the competition of the Dream Scholarship Science and Technology Innovation Award. When asked about the key words of college life, Ni Qinghe answered "Fun", "Try" and "Persistence". She said: "Actually, I am not a student who has been studying hard all the time. During my four years in UNNC, I have met many interesting people and things and cultivated many hobbies. These hobbies make my college life not boring but extraordinarily colorful."
It turns out that Ni Qinghe has been in contract with a lot of sports since she was a child, which started with her affinity for martial arts. She said: "When I was in elementary school, I disliked sports and I was very fat. My parents encouraged me to learn a sport so I just went to a martial arts class. Martial arts consumed a lot of energies giving me big practice. With exercises, my physical fitness gradually got better, and I found that I began to like sports. After junior high school, I got into more sports and gradually changed my mind."
Ni Qinghe's parents always encouraged her to try hard while she was growing up. She said: "My parents often took me to travel and experience different natural sceneries. They also supported me in raising all kinds of pets, such as puppies, rabbits and various insects." These growth experiences made Ni Qinghe gradually become a girl who loves nature and is full of love. In college, she obtained the Top Rope Protector Certificate and the Red Cross Ambulance Worker Certificate. Through professional training, she could help others better.
In addition, Ni Qinghe also designed a table lamp and obtained a utility model patent. She said, "At that time I was studying in the dormitory and I worried that the afterglow of the lamp would affect my roommates, so I had to surround the lamp with cardboard. Later, I went to the market to look for a table lamp that could fix the lighting range but I found that there was no product with this function. With the encouragement of my father, I designed a table lamp with a light source that can move up and down based on the principle of 'Archimedes spiral', and later I successfully applied for a utility model patent. " Although this patent did not use very complicated technology, it gave Ni Qinghe a lot of encouragement. She realized that as long as she was good at discovering opportunities and developing creativity, life would bring her many interesting surprises.
As a UNNC freshman, Ni Qinghe first chose to play squash, an indoor sport, due to the humid and rainy climate in Ningbo. With her tennis background, she quickly mastered the game of squash. Ni Qinghe said: "Unlike tennis, I can play squash by yourself against the wall, so I often played squash in my spare time. Later, I joined the University Squash Team and met like-minded friends. It was an unforgettable experience.”
From the sophomore year, Ni Qinghe began to participate in outdoor activities organized by the University. In summer, she and her team members from the Mountaineering Team went hiking with tents and trekking poles. In winter vacations, she went skiing with the club in Hebei and went ice climbing in Sichuan. She said: "Ice climbing is mainly popular in the European and American countries, which means rock climbing on the ice. It is a thrilling winter sport. I need to use an ice ax to climb over the frozen waterfall bit by bit. This process was very hard, but when I saw the top of the waterfall, it was going to be very exciting. It’s the same with skiing, at the beginning I was stumbling and not able to snowboard at all but finally I got to the exit by myself, the excitement and the sense of accomplishment really fascinated me.”Ni Qinghe studied Aerospace Engineering, which involves physics, computer science, materials science and other disciplines. UNNC employed teachers and engineers with rich experience in various fields such as aeronautical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and materials engineering to guide and teach students, and provide a series of courses. In order to deepen her professional understanding, Ni Qinghe signed up for the research Impact of Touchscreen versus Conventional Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) displays on aviation safety during her sophomore year. She investigated and analyzed the impact of touch screen product GTN and traditional EFIS product G1000 on aviation safety, simulated flight time, studied predetermined design flight plans, used analytical tools and mathematical models to calculate flight parameters, and analyzed pilot distraction behavior.
This research was Ni Qinghe's first complete contact with scientific research activities. Under the guidance of the professor, she completed all the tasks well. In the process of collecting data, conducting experiments and arranging data, Ni Qinghe not only became familiar with the scientific research process, but also gained a deeper understanding of aerospace engineering. The research stimulated Ni Qinghe's interest in scientific research so she later on participated in academic activities such as Research on fluid handling system of vaporized Liquid Microthruster (VLM) and LQR Based State Feedback Controller Design for Quadrotor . In addition, she also participated in Robomaster Mecha Masters Contest and International Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) with achieving good results. These activities have broadened Ni Qinghe's professional vision. In particular, the mathematical modeling contest gave her the idea of in-depth study of data modeling.
With a strong interest in data modeling, Ni Qinghe signed up for a lecture on mathematical modeling held by Wenzhou University during her junior year. Knowing that the professor was recruiting scientific research members to study the ecological efficiency evaluation model, Ni Qinghe actively got in touch with the professor. In the end, Ni Qinghe successfully joined the project team and started her academic research outside her major. A new ecological efficiency model was constructed with input index considering the consumption of capital, human resources, resources and environmental load and the output of index considering GDP, resident income and tax. After nearly ten months of hard work, Ni Qinghe and the team successfully published the paper on SCIE: Eco-efficiency Evaluation Model: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt , and this experience gave her a valuable scientific research result in the undergraduate stage.
At this time, Ni Qinghe found an academic direction that she loved outside of engineering. Compared with the research in the aviation laboratory, Ni Qinghe found that generalizing and summarizing the data was more attractive to her. In the second semester of her junior year, in order to study the data knowledge more deeply, she decided to go abroad for postgraduate study. With excellent grades and rich scientific research experiences, Ni Qinghe has now received offers from world top universities of Imperial College, University College London as well as Munich University. In the fall of 2022, she will start a new study life abroad.
Looking back on the four years in UNNC, Ni Qinghe was very grateful for the teachers' guidance and various campus activities. She said: "I would like to thank Professor Yang Fujia and the Education Foundation setting the Dream Scholarship. President Yang donated the scholarship to encouraged the students to develop in an all-round way beyond the professional learning and the Education Foundation set up a series of campus fund projects, which allowed me to fully display my talent in the diversified campus atmosphere." In UNNC, Ni Qinghe tried and persevered on many things, and finally she found the objective she truly loved. Ni Qinghe found something in common between her hobbies and studies and she compared the academic work to ice climbing: "At the beginning, they will make people feel very difficult and have no way to start. ‘Go far from here and work hard’, we will finally reach the top of the mountain as long as we start the first step, face every challenge with our feet on the ground, and continue to solve problems. "
When it came to graduation, Ni Qinghe was asked what she would say to her younger siblings. She replied that: "There is more than one definitions of 'excellence'. It can be getting an offer from your favorite school, or finding a job you really love, or completing something you want to do for a long time. We may focus more on ourselves whether we have really learned knowledge, whether we have really found love, and whether we have truly become who we want to be. I hope everyone can shine in the world they love."