Yunke Peng, a UNNC alumnus who is currently doing his doctoral research in the ETH Zurich with full scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, would like to share with us how he embark his journey of research with the UNNC.
In 2018, Yunke Peng graduated from UNNC with a First-class honour degree in Environmental Sciences. Then he was admitted into the Master of Research programme at Imperial College London on Ecosystems and Environmental Change. During postgraduate studies, he published two articles in New Phytologist and Communications Biology, under the supervision from Professor Iain Colin Prentice, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Science. These two articles mainly focus on the next-generation models of plant traits and photosynthesis.
With the great academic and research performance in the previous study, in the last summer, Yunke was admitted into ETH Zurich, one of the top research universities in the world, with 4-year full scholarship offered by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
His research focuses on the models of the global terrestrial carbon and nitrogen cycle. Carbon and nitrogen are two major elements in the earth system and closely related to the global warming issue and people’s everyday lives. It moves among soil, plants, atmosphere and hydrology. For example, plants photosynthesis, a process that assimilates carbon dioxide and releases oxygen, is directly involved in the assimilation of greenhouse gases. This process is influenced by both climate and soil fertility (e.g., the more nitrogen and phosphorus concentration in soil, the more favourable their environment is likely to be for plant growth).
Therefore, in one of the papers, Yunke Peng combines these environmental factors and uses a ecology-based theoretical model to predict and explain photosynthesis from climates and nutrients at the global scale. Furthermore, Yunke's doctoral project hopes to take into account these key processes in the carbon and nitrogen cycle as comprehensively as possible, especially how these processes are affected by climate, soil and human factors, so as to make more accurate and universal predictions of future global climate change.
Joining into UNNC is one of the best choice he ever made. His interests in research was originated from the learning experience in the UNNC. In the Year 2, Yunke conducted the first research project called “Cooling island effect in Ningbo”. At that time, he went to the park near the campus every week to take samples. He also liked to discuss with his classmates why the temperature in the park was lower than that in the city centre. He received many supports from the academic staff in the school.
The whole teaching team is very supportive. They are very willing to talk with students and share their experience and advices on how to conduct research.”
This year, Yunke Peng was also invited by Dr Odette Paramor, Head of School of Geographical Sciences, to give a sharing session with the current students.
He appreciates the Liberal Arts education in the UNNC where he had opportunity to explore his interests, especially through the extra-curricular activities. He had participated in FoSE summer research placement, research project in Chinese Academy of Sciences, and internship in the WWF.
As a science student, he also holds passion on the literature and sports. He, together with his roommate in the UNNC, run a WeChat public account to record their university life. His article is also published in several newspaper and journals at home like People’s Daily , Hunan Daily and Hunan Literatures. He also worked with domestically known football media platform as an intern editor.
Yunke is determined to return to his motherland in the future when he finished his doctoral research and bring more insights and contribution to the fundamental research in the plant models in China.