UNNC has made a breakthrough in this year’s Zhejiang Key R&D Programme application. A Key R&D project entitled “R&D on solid waste green processing technology and equipment” led by Professor Tao Wu, Dean of Faculty of Science Engineering has been approved by Zhejiang S&T Department with the funding amount over RMB 4 million. The project is led by UNNC research team, collaborating with relevant teams from Zhejiang University, Zhejiang Medicine CO., LTD Xinchang Pharmaceutical Factory and Nottingham New Material Institute. The implementation of this project will not only improve the level of harmlessness and resource utilization of pharmaceutical sludge in China, but also have significant impact on the green environmental protection disposal of other bulk industrial organic solid wastes.

Another success is that three post 85s early-career UNNC researchers have successfully secured grants under this year’s Zhejiang Basic and Commonweal Programme jointly supported by Zhejiang S&T Department and Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation Committee. They are Dr. Shu Liu (FoSE) with her research project entitled “Study on the shear behaviors of asphalt mixtures in a mescoscopic level and shakedown analysis for asphaltic pavements under high temperatures”, Dr. Boon Giin Lee(FoSE) with his project entitled “ Research on smart AI for firefighters safety assessment”, and Dr. Boying Li (FoB) with her project entitled “Understanding the dissemination of online health-related fake rumors under the public health emergency: from the perspectives of information features and source persona”. In addition, an academic exchange project entitled “Research workshop on digital innovation and new venture creation” led by Professor Martin Liu (FoB) has received funding support by Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation Committee.

About the programmes:

Zhejiang Key R&D Programme aims to support R&D projects that strengthen interagency, cross-sector, cross-region collaboration in industrial, agricultural, social development fields for the purposes of conquering key core technologies, especially "bottleneck" technologies, developing a number of strategic logo products, and spurring economic and social development in Zhejiang. It is a regular funding call usually from late May or early June each year and the average funding amount is over one million per project.

Zhejiang Basic and Commonweal Programme includes two types of schemes, i.e. Natural Science Foundation Scheme and Commonweal Technology Scheme. The Natural Science Foundation Scheme aims to support fundamental research, applied fundamental research and strategic frontier technology research in fields of natural science, engineering science and management science. The Commonweal Technology Scheme mainly supports applied research, which the research outcome could meet the demand of social development, and encourages cooperation with those demonstration unites that the research outcomes can be applied or used. The call is usually open from late April or early May each year and the funding amount varies from RMB 50k to 1 million depending on the schemes and sub-schemes.