Annual summary (2011)
Looking back 2011, we had another wonderful year. I felt there were so many to summarize and to report. However, a few glasses of C2H5OH take off half of my memory. The positive side of this effect is that whatever I remember are those that impressed me most during the year, without the nitty-gritty details.
1, The most impressive of the group in 2011 is the human productivity. I do not have the list of the babies produced in 2011 (in my office, but I am at home writing this email). It's a long one. Let's warmly congratulate those of us who became moms and dads in 2011 again. There are quite a few having the honors of being mother and/or father second or third times. We are proud of you.
McMaster Faculty of Engineering emphasizes a lot sustainability. Dean Wilkinson talked about sustainability almost at every event. The most important content of sustainability is the human production. Our group deserves a proper recognition. Let you know. In this year's Dept Xmas party, I also handed out seven Sustainability Awards to the Dept's colleagues who produced babies in the past five years. It's amazing, 7 in 5 years! Someday when we all get together we should do the same in the group.
2, The second most important is to produce HQPs. Do you know what's HQP? It's NSERC language, it means Masters, PhD's and PDFs, people like you - highly qualified personnel. One of the top tasks of university is to train HQP. In this regard, we have every reason to celebrate. In 2011, we had 3 PhD's graduated. They are Helen Gu, Sara Alibeik and Ping Liu, 3 super ladies. We also had 2 Masters: Meng Li and Cam Derry. Soon we will have 2 more: Nels Grauman-Neanders and Mark Rattle. We also had 2 visiting scholars completed, Prof Liang from Taiyuan and PhD candidate Weifeng Liu. By any standard, it's a big year in HQP production.
3, Again on the human side, in 2011 we had many joined the group. Prof. Zhou joined the group as a part of his sabbatical from Jiaxin University where he is a dept chair. In May, Lily So joined us. Lily is a top student from Waterloo's Nano program. After 4 or 5 years in nano, she wanted to grow to micro, macro and systems size. She works as Masters with Super Faucher at XRCC. In September, we had Erlita Mastan, a top student from Ryerson, Mohammad Ali, a top student from Amirkabir, Chad Smithson, a top student from Guelph. These three had Masters already from their respective universities and are working on doctoral degree from McMaster. It's interesting to note that Chad's background is inorganic chemistry - no polymer no engineering. His recommender, my academic father Archie Hamielec told me that Chad is much smarter than myself. I am always getting excited when I received this type of recommendations. We also had 2 Masters: Hermes Zhu from ZJU and Yvanne Ren from NCU/ZJU. Hermes' Zhu and my Zhu are the same Zhu in Chinese, but I could not find any family relationship back 5 generations - clear at arm's length. He was recommended to me by my colleague at ZJU and an insider, as a top student. Yvanne is a top student from NCU. Her food engineering background is a great asset for our research. She works mainly with Dr. Brash in SBME. 2011 is a really big year for the turnover with old graduated and new coming in. Let's congratulate our new people and wish them the very best in their studies.
4, The third most important is probably the research productivity - paper/patent publication. I just checked SCI today. We had a total of 13 papers, with 8 of them generated from McMaster and 5 from ZJU collaboration. This year's hero is Helen Gu. She published 3 good papers. For those who know Helen, we recognized her super ability, particularly her multi talents. She is not only good at science/engineering but also arts. She is probably the most artistic member we ever had in our group. She also served as Club President and for the combination of research and leadership, she won the Robert Anderson Award, after Ed Kolodka and Santi Faucher in our group, with Aileen Wang as an almost for the Aweard in history. Another impressive point is that Super Wei Feng publsihed another paper this year. It reminded me General Douglas MaCarthur's "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away". Our old soldiers even not fade away!
A note re research publication: Recalling 17 years as a faculty member supervising graduate students, I learned many things in improving research productivity. By comparing our people generation to generation, one of the most important things in research productivity is a good start. It is true that "a good start represents half a success". Our early generations published papers in their first or second years, while our recent people published in their last years. It made a big difference in terms of productivity and recognitions. In the recent group meeting, I mentioned many times that we will go back, that is, have publications as earlier as possible. This involves two things: (1) work hard from the very beginning, get fingers wet ASAP, do not postpone stuff to the end; (2) I need to spend more time with students. The over a decade data has proven that the group productivity is linearly proportional to the time I spent. Re: (1), although our group works harder than other's, I believe there is a lot room to improve compared to the older generations. Our recent graduates all gave the same feedback that they must work harder in the jobs now and realized that in comparison it was not too easy in the group. Re: (2), I will certainly try my best. The dept chair takes me a lot of time. But I still manage time to look after the group and find time to think about projects.
Our most recent trend shows that we are heading to the right direction. Dr. Zhou has generated 3 papers in his first 8 months with 2 having Erlita worked together. The first has been (almost) accepted by Macromolecules. Lily, started from May, has written one review paper. It is clearly she learned Santi style, so well organized and amazing logic. Hongyu, a smart fellow having a lot of brains, has submitted his first paper that in in a totally different area - metallic-organic framework membrane, which I had no clue and I cross finger for his paper to be accepted. Chad, Ali, Hermes and Yvanne have all got fingers wet in their first semester. An excellent start!
5, Our collaboration with ZJU continued to be greatly successful. I normally spent a month or so in ZJU in summer and a week or so in winter. The out is just superb. The students who I cosupervised over there generated 5 papers in 2011 with 2 in Macromolecules and 1 in Langmuir. Thank to Prof Wen-Jun Wang for his dedication as a daily supervisor for a larger group of 16 people at ZJU. There are still a few papers on my hand to review
6, As a professor and supervisor, students are like my children. The happiest thing is to see my children are doing well. Throughout the years, I head so many good news from so many of you. In additional to who who who produced baby, there were many many who who who received awards and promotions, who who who receive big raises, who who who found better jobs, who who who enjoyed a big trip , who who who ... I should really penned down all of these but just did not have the habit. By any standard, our people are doing extremely well. I am very proud of you!!!
7, I would also like to briefly report my work as the dept chair. As you know, my term is 5 years. By today, I am half done. Frankly, I did not realize there are so many things to do as a chair and so time consuming. It also explains why I did not spent more time with the group talking about research and life that I enjoyed the most. On the other side, I felt good when I saw my effort made some differences in the dept. When I started, the dept experienced some challenges in many areas. I targeted to three areas (1) improve FTE (the number of faculty members), (2) improve Dept family style culture and (3) in crease faculty-student interactions. Not every area has progressed as I wanted. But we have made a big difference in (1). We have all the new professors started and proven to be excellent teachers and researchers. There are so good changes in (2) and (3). A plausible thing is that the most difficult period is over and from now on I will have more time with the group for research and collaboration. In 2011, as your rep, I was inducted as a Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (that elected a max 20 each year from its tens member societies), and was awarded Chemical Institute of Canada's Macromolecular Science and Engineering Award (one recipient per year with the last chemical engineer recipient receiving this award a decade ago).
8, A final point: I thank you for your Xmas and New Year greetings. I had a trip Dec 16 -28 and received all the emails during the time. However, I could not reply one by one. Here and all together, I wish you and your family, your parents, brothers and sisters, and your relatives and friends all Happy New Year!
A note: It's been my style that I wrote the year summary in one breath and never revised it, without any references. I guarantee that I missed a lot. Do not feel too bad if anything significant from you is left out here. Remember your supervisor is 52 years old with his brain and memory overused for 3 decades.
I am looking forward to hearing from you more exciting news in 2012!
Warmest personal regards,
Shiping Zhu
1, The most impressive of the group in 2011 is the human productivity. I do not have the list of the babies produced in 2011 (in my office, but I am at home writing this email). It's a long one. Let's warmly congratulate those of us who became moms and dads in 2011 again. There are quite a few having the honors of being mother and/or father second or third times. We are proud of you.
McMaster Faculty of Engineering emphasizes a lot sustainability. Dean Wilkinson talked about sustainability almost at every event. The most important content of sustainability is the human production. Our group deserves a proper recognition. Let you know. In this year's Dept Xmas party, I also handed out seven Sustainability Awards to the Dept's colleagues who produced babies in the past five years. It's amazing, 7 in 5 years! Someday when we all get together we should do the same in the group.
2, The second most important is to produce HQPs. Do you know what's HQP? It's NSERC language, it means Masters, PhD's and PDFs, people like you - highly qualified personnel. One of the top tasks of university is to train HQP. In this regard, we have every reason to celebrate. In 2011, we had 3 PhD's graduated. They are Helen Gu, Sara Alibeik and Ping Liu, 3 super ladies. We also had 2 Masters: Meng Li and Cam Derry. Soon we will have 2 more: Nels Grauman-Neanders and Mark Rattle. We also had 2 visiting scholars completed, Prof Liang from Taiyuan and PhD candidate Weifeng Liu. By any standard, it's a big year in HQP production.
3, Again on the human side, in 2011 we had many joined the group. Prof. Zhou joined the group as a part of his sabbatical from Jiaxin University where he is a dept chair. In May, Lily So joined us. Lily is a top student from Waterloo's Nano program. After 4 or 5 years in nano, she wanted to grow to micro, macro and systems size. She works as Masters with Super Faucher at XRCC. In September, we had Erlita Mastan, a top student from Ryerson, Mohammad Ali, a top student from Amirkabir, Chad Smithson, a top student from Guelph. These three had Masters already from their respective universities and are working on doctoral degree from McMaster. It's interesting to note that Chad's background is inorganic chemistry - no polymer no engineering. His recommender, my academic father Archie Hamielec told me that Chad is much smarter than myself. I am always getting excited when I received this type of recommendations. We also had 2 Masters: Hermes Zhu from ZJU and Yvanne Ren from NCU/ZJU. Hermes' Zhu and my Zhu are the same Zhu in Chinese, but I could not find any family relationship back 5 generations - clear at arm's length. He was recommended to me by my colleague at ZJU and an insider, as a top student. Yvanne is a top student from NCU. Her food engineering background is a great asset for our research. She works mainly with Dr. Brash in SBME. 2011 is a really big year for the turnover with old graduated and new coming in. Let's congratulate our new people and wish them the very best in their studies.
4, The third most important is probably the research productivity - paper/patent publication. I just checked SCI today. We had a total of 13 papers, with 8 of them generated from McMaster and 5 from ZJU collaboration. This year's hero is Helen Gu. She published 3 good papers. For those who know Helen, we recognized her super ability, particularly her multi talents. She is not only good at science/engineering but also arts. She is probably the most artistic member we ever had in our group. She also served as Club President and for the combination of research and leadership, she won the Robert Anderson Award, after Ed Kolodka and Santi Faucher in our group, with Aileen Wang as an almost for the Aweard in history. Another impressive point is that Super Wei Feng publsihed another paper this year. It reminded me General Douglas MaCarthur's "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away". Our old soldiers even not fade away!
A note re research publication: Recalling 17 years as a faculty member supervising graduate students, I learned many things in improving research productivity. By comparing our people generation to generation, one of the most important things in research productivity is a good start. It is true that "a good start represents half a success". Our early generations published papers in their first or second years, while our recent people published in their last years. It made a big difference in terms of productivity and recognitions. In the recent group meeting, I mentioned many times that we will go back, that is, have publications as earlier as possible. This involves two things: (1) work hard from the very beginning, get fingers wet ASAP, do not postpone stuff to the end; (2) I need to spend more time with students. The over a decade data has proven that the group productivity is linearly proportional to the time I spent. Re: (1), although our group works harder than other's, I believe there is a lot room to improve compared to the older generations. Our recent graduates all gave the same feedback that they must work harder in the jobs now and realized that in comparison it was not too easy in the group. Re: (2), I will certainly try my best. The dept chair takes me a lot of time. But I still manage time to look after the group and find time to think about projects.
Our most recent trend shows that we are heading to the right direction. Dr. Zhou has generated 3 papers in his first 8 months with 2 having Erlita worked together. The first has been (almost) accepted by Macromolecules. Lily, started from May, has written one review paper. It is clearly she learned Santi style, so well organized and amazing logic. Hongyu, a smart fellow having a lot of brains, has submitted his first paper that in in a totally different area - metallic-organic framework membrane, which I had no clue and I cross finger for his paper to be accepted. Chad, Ali, Hermes and Yvanne have all got fingers wet in their first semester. An excellent start!
5, Our collaboration with ZJU continued to be greatly successful. I normally spent a month or so in ZJU in summer and a week or so in winter. The out is just superb. The students who I cosupervised over there generated 5 papers in 2011 with 2 in Macromolecules and 1 in Langmuir. Thank to Prof Wen-Jun Wang for his dedication as a daily supervisor for a larger group of 16 people at ZJU. There are still a few papers on my hand to review
6, As a professor and supervisor, students are like my children. The happiest thing is to see my children are doing well. Throughout the years, I head so many good news from so many of you. In additional to who who who produced baby, there were many many who who who received awards and promotions, who who who receive big raises, who who who found better jobs, who who who enjoyed a big trip , who who who ... I should really penned down all of these but just did not have the habit. By any standard, our people are doing extremely well. I am very proud of you!!!
7, I would also like to briefly report my work as the dept chair. As you know, my term is 5 years. By today, I am half done. Frankly, I did not realize there are so many things to do as a chair and so time consuming. It also explains why I did not spent more time with the group talking about research and life that I enjoyed the most. On the other side, I felt good when I saw my effort made some differences in the dept. When I started, the dept experienced some challenges in many areas. I targeted to three areas (1) improve FTE (the number of faculty members), (2) improve Dept family style culture and (3) in crease faculty-student interactions. Not every area has progressed as I wanted. But we have made a big difference in (1). We have all the new professors started and proven to be excellent teachers and researchers. There are so good changes in (2) and (3). A plausible thing is that the most difficult period is over and from now on I will have more time with the group for research and collaboration. In 2011, as your rep, I was inducted as a Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (that elected a max 20 each year from its tens member societies), and was awarded Chemical Institute of Canada's Macromolecular Science and Engineering Award (one recipient per year with the last chemical engineer recipient receiving this award a decade ago).
8, A final point: I thank you for your Xmas and New Year greetings. I had a trip Dec 16 -28 and received all the emails during the time. However, I could not reply one by one. Here and all together, I wish you and your family, your parents, brothers and sisters, and your relatives and friends all Happy New Year!
A note: It's been my style that I wrote the year summary in one breath and never revised it, without any references. I guarantee that I missed a lot. Do not feel too bad if anything significant from you is left out here. Remember your supervisor is 52 years old with his brain and memory overused for 3 decades.
I am looking forward to hearing from you more exciting news in 2012!
Warmest personal regards,
Shiping Zhu