Annual summary (2012)
Dear All,
Today is January 1st 2013! It's highly time to summarize the year of 2012. My first impression about 2012 is: time does fly! People often use"that day was like a whole year" in describing a difficult day. If the opposite is also true, we must have an extremely happy 2012 because the whole year passed just like a day!
1/ We had four people completed (or finished?) Hongyu Lu defended in July and returned to China, joining an energy company. He is highly motivated to save the world's energy problem. Mark Rattle defended in the summer too and joined the wax emulsion company. Nels Grauman wanted to be Norman Bethune the 2nd. He went to Puerto Rico more than a year ago and found the med school was not what he expected because professors spent most time lying on beaches, not dressed up like us at McMaster. He has now transferred to a new med school near Seattle. Lily So defended in December and perfectly met Mac's requirement of 20 months. She is expected to join Hatch in January. And of course, Rummana Syed, the vegetable oil work sent her to 3M. I expected a thesis draft due yesterday, but I have yet seen it today and let's hope tomorrow.
2/ It is of interest to note:all the above four were Master's. It's in a direct contrast to 2011's 3 PhD's and 2 Master's. Believe it or not, it was because of this that I was determined to increase the number of PhD's. As a result, Erlita Mastan, Mohammad Ali and Chad Smithson successfully passed comprehensive exam in December. Chad passed the exam with distinguish (very rare in the department). He answered questions with amazing confidence. Later he told me he was not sure if his answers were right or wrong. Anyway the committee was impressed. With Hermes Zhu transferred (the same Zhu as mine, but not related at least for the past 500 years), the group has four PhD's and 1 Master (Yvanne Ren) now. In the summer, we expected 4 visiting scholars to show up. By yesterday, only one did. It's Professor Heyang Liu, from Zhejiang University of Science and Technology. The other three, two from industry and one from school, postponed their arrival because of delayed visas. We look forward! All four are supported China scholarships.
3/ During the year, I have met many former group members. Some hosted my visits and others came back to visit the group. Our people continued doing well. There are some significant changes. For example, Santi Faucher left Xerox and moved to Hatch. He worked for Hatch because came to Mac. He drew a perfect circle but from Engineer to Technical Director. Santi's sister Aileen Wang moved around in ExxonMobil and appeared to have the same potential. Those, working in universities, might not make as much, but appeared to have a similar level of happiness. Prof Wen-Jun Wang and Prof Youqing Shen at ZJU have each built a group of ~20 graduate students. Prof Zhibin Ye has collected all the honours. It seems everybody (almost everybody?) is doing very well. There are many stories but it's hard to recall all the details with a severe jet-lag effect now (I cam back from China 30th night). And of course, plus the ice wine at today's dinner.
4/ "Our strength is research, our product is people!" After talking about people, l looked at the 2012's research of the group. It's convenient to check Web of Science or Google Scholar. Here is the data: 10 papers appeared (collected by WofS, there were a couple more appeared but not collected yet). Among the ten, six were from Mac group and four from ZJU collaboration. This year's heros and heroines are Prof Dapeng Zhou (2), Sara Alibeik (2), Qi Zhang (ZJU 2), Helen Gu (1), Bean Yang (1), Dunming Wang (1) and Xinwang Ye (ZJU 1). Dapeng was a visiting professor who spent just a year with us. I am impressed by Dapeng's talents in both academia and entrepreneurship. Mac is prepared for something in future.
5/ The most impressive record for 2012 is our citation record. Our work were cited 660 times in the year. It's the second highest in our history. Wei Feng's papers on bio surface become so popular. He alone collected 100! Hualong Pan is the second and collected about 70. Congratulations and thank you for the good work.
Oops, its almost mid-night. I have an appointment to meet Provost early morning tomorrow. I'd better go bed now. Seeing Provost with sleepy eyes will not do good for my salary for sure. For those who do not know what's Provost. It's second to President on campus. I did not realize our school starts January 2 in 2013! Classes start Jan 7. I thought I would have a week time to complete revising the papers on hand, its quite a few! Lily, Erlita, Hermes, Pingwei, Dunming … (who else?) But I am determined to get them down in January and February.
Looking back the above five points, I do not understand why the whole year passed just like a day. Maybe, there were too many happy things that are forgotten! Oh, yes, it's about the Department … But I got go bed.
Happy 2013!
Shiping Zhu, FCAE, FCIC
Professor and Chair
Department of Chemical Engineering,
McMaster University, Canada
Today is January 1st 2013! It's highly time to summarize the year of 2012. My first impression about 2012 is: time does fly! People often use"that day was like a whole year" in describing a difficult day. If the opposite is also true, we must have an extremely happy 2012 because the whole year passed just like a day!
1/ We had four people completed (or finished?) Hongyu Lu defended in July and returned to China, joining an energy company. He is highly motivated to save the world's energy problem. Mark Rattle defended in the summer too and joined the wax emulsion company. Nels Grauman wanted to be Norman Bethune the 2nd. He went to Puerto Rico more than a year ago and found the med school was not what he expected because professors spent most time lying on beaches, not dressed up like us at McMaster. He has now transferred to a new med school near Seattle. Lily So defended in December and perfectly met Mac's requirement of 20 months. She is expected to join Hatch in January. And of course, Rummana Syed, the vegetable oil work sent her to 3M. I expected a thesis draft due yesterday, but I have yet seen it today and let's hope tomorrow.
2/ It is of interest to note:all the above four were Master's. It's in a direct contrast to 2011's 3 PhD's and 2 Master's. Believe it or not, it was because of this that I was determined to increase the number of PhD's. As a result, Erlita Mastan, Mohammad Ali and Chad Smithson successfully passed comprehensive exam in December. Chad passed the exam with distinguish (very rare in the department). He answered questions with amazing confidence. Later he told me he was not sure if his answers were right or wrong. Anyway the committee was impressed. With Hermes Zhu transferred (the same Zhu as mine, but not related at least for the past 500 years), the group has four PhD's and 1 Master (Yvanne Ren) now. In the summer, we expected 4 visiting scholars to show up. By yesterday, only one did. It's Professor Heyang Liu, from Zhejiang University of Science and Technology. The other three, two from industry and one from school, postponed their arrival because of delayed visas. We look forward! All four are supported China scholarships.
3/ During the year, I have met many former group members. Some hosted my visits and others came back to visit the group. Our people continued doing well. There are some significant changes. For example, Santi Faucher left Xerox and moved to Hatch. He worked for Hatch because came to Mac. He drew a perfect circle but from Engineer to Technical Director. Santi's sister Aileen Wang moved around in ExxonMobil and appeared to have the same potential. Those, working in universities, might not make as much, but appeared to have a similar level of happiness. Prof Wen-Jun Wang and Prof Youqing Shen at ZJU have each built a group of ~20 graduate students. Prof Zhibin Ye has collected all the honours. It seems everybody (almost everybody?) is doing very well. There are many stories but it's hard to recall all the details with a severe jet-lag effect now (I cam back from China 30th night). And of course, plus the ice wine at today's dinner.
4/ "Our strength is research, our product is people!" After talking about people, l looked at the 2012's research of the group. It's convenient to check Web of Science or Google Scholar. Here is the data: 10 papers appeared (collected by WofS, there were a couple more appeared but not collected yet). Among the ten, six were from Mac group and four from ZJU collaboration. This year's heros and heroines are Prof Dapeng Zhou (2), Sara Alibeik (2), Qi Zhang (ZJU 2), Helen Gu (1), Bean Yang (1), Dunming Wang (1) and Xinwang Ye (ZJU 1). Dapeng was a visiting professor who spent just a year with us. I am impressed by Dapeng's talents in both academia and entrepreneurship. Mac is prepared for something in future.
5/ The most impressive record for 2012 is our citation record. Our work were cited 660 times in the year. It's the second highest in our history. Wei Feng's papers on bio surface become so popular. He alone collected 100! Hualong Pan is the second and collected about 70. Congratulations and thank you for the good work.
Oops, its almost mid-night. I have an appointment to meet Provost early morning tomorrow. I'd better go bed now. Seeing Provost with sleepy eyes will not do good for my salary for sure. For those who do not know what's Provost. It's second to President on campus. I did not realize our school starts January 2 in 2013! Classes start Jan 7. I thought I would have a week time to complete revising the papers on hand, its quite a few! Lily, Erlita, Hermes, Pingwei, Dunming … (who else?) But I am determined to get them down in January and February.
Looking back the above five points, I do not understand why the whole year passed just like a day. Maybe, there were too many happy things that are forgotten! Oh, yes, it's about the Department … But I got go bed.
Happy 2013!
Shiping Zhu, FCAE, FCIC
Professor and Chair
Department of Chemical Engineering,
McMaster University, Canada