FoSE academic supervised local high school students to do scientific research

05 May 2021


Recently, a paper entitled "The impact of COVID-19 on the global graphene industry" has been published in the Journal of Nano Research & Applications, in which the four high school students, Wen Wen, Chenyang Lu, Bingyi Lin and Qianlun Hong, co-authored the article together with the doctoral students and academic staff from the Faculty of Science and Engineering, UNNC.

In the 4th Ningbo Youth Talent Programme, Dr Cheng Heng Pang, Associate Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, together with his PhD students Yuxin Yan, Yoong Xin Pang and Xinyun Wu supervised a group of high school students to explore the green conversion of waste materials into value-added graphene materials.

“The COVID-19 outbreak has impacted numerous industries across the globe, including the graphene industry. Although the students could not perform advanced laboratory experiments at this stage, the understanding of real-time status and various challenges faced by the graphene industry could help us understand, review and potentially identify areas that can be improved. This could bring positive influence and further advance the development in relevant fields” said Yoong Xin.

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During their visits to UNNC, the high school students were in strict compliance with the prevention and control measures of FoSE and UNNC. They were given health and safety trainings and quizzes, followed by practical and equipment trainings. They were introduced to and involved in experimental sessions including sample preparation, biomass characterization via microscopy, as well as understanding the analytical methods used in graphene research.

The students were proactive and became increasingly more engaged as they gain more knowledge about the topic. They were very much motivated when Dr Pang assigned them to prepare manuscripts and patents. The four students reviewed articles provided by the lead supervisor and have managed clear task allocation among themselves. While it is rather challenging for high school students to read, understand and interpret technical papers in English, let alone writing them, the students quickly picked up on academic writing under the guidance of the research team at UNNC. Their efforts and inputs have been acknowledged having published one journal paper and filed a patent. The supervisors are proud of them.

Yoong Xin commented: "I see great potential in them, they are still so young, yet they have taken the initiatives to perform scientific exploration and are open to taking advices from the supervisors. These are aspects that we value in the younger generation”

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Dr Cheng Heng Pang is the Head of the Advanced Energy and Environmental Materials Technology Research Group, whose research includes renewable energy and the manufacturing of advanced materials from renewable resources for biomedical applications. Graphene, with unique physical, chemical, optical and thermal properties, has important application prospects in biomedical and drug delivery industries. As a result, its global demand has increased drastically during the outbreak. Dr Pang has begun the research on utilising agricultural waste and municipal solid waste to produce high-value graphene materials in the past few years. This research provides an innovative solution to waste management and resource utilisation by converting waste materials to value-added products. In addition, the biomedical industry is expected to benefit from Dr Pang’s research by significantly reducing the costs for cancer treatment and by improving the availability of treatment to more patients, particularly in low- to middle-income areas. At present, the project is still in the laboratory development stage, but has obtained a number of invention patents.

The 4th Ningbo Youth Talent Programme, in which Dr Pang was involved in supervising two high schools, i.e. UNNC Affilicated High School and Ningbo Huizhen Academy, is now officially closed. In total, two journal papers were submitted and two invention patents were filed. The papers and patents co-authored by students from Huizhen Academy are currently under review.