Annual summary (2015)
Again, it’s the last day of a year. Different from the previous summaries, this one is not assisted by N cups of C2H5OH, for I had a terrible experience on December 13 and has made my mind to stay away from the lovely molecule from then on and forever. Another difference is that I took ten days off after Pacifichem Dec 15-20 for a vacation with family in the Big Island. This is one of a kind in a quarter of century, which truly is a complete vacation, thinking little about work and ignoring all the requests for paper revisions, grant reviews and writing reference letters etc etc etc. A year ago, I tried to use the holiday season to clean up stuff on my to-do list of 2014, as I normally did at the end of a year, so that I could have a fresh start for 2015. However, it was proven to be a mistake that made me feel miserable after spending the whole holiday in office alone. This Christmas and New Year time is then very different.
1/ We have every reason to celebrate 2015! We made a record year of research productivity. Look at the data: The group has published 30 papers with 10 more papers accepted: 25 from Mac group and 15 from collaboration (mainly with ZJU).
2/ The superstar of the year is: Erlita Mastan, who published 4 papers. Erlita probably holds the record over the past five years, with a total of 7 first-authored and 3 co-authored (possibly 1 or 2 more to come). It’s amazing. It is not easy to derive the most fundamental and desirable ATRP’s MWD and PDI equations. Her thesis became one of the few in the department rated as outstanding in every category for awards. Other superstars are: Hermes Zhu who published 3 papers; Song Guo 3; Chad Smithson 2 with one in Advanced Materials; Yong Qian 2 in Green Chemistry; Ali Mohammad Rabea 2. Almost every group member in the group published at least one paper.
3/ Our citation record looks great. I just checked Web of Science and Google Scholar. SCI has reached >8500 (H=50) and Google Scholar is only 300 short from 10000 (H=54). The annual Google Scholar citation is over 1000.
4/ The research success of the year could also be attributed to 3 superb postdoctoral fellows and 1 Visiting Scholar: Dr. Qi Zhang assisted supervising several graduate students, while made the pioneering contribution to ionic liquid as versatile media for PISA; Dr. Weifeng Liu made great effort in succeeding the AFTON project on high temperature CSTR functional polyolefins, while completed three major review papers with Dr. Pingwei Liu (who is at MIT doing PDF work); Dr. Xiaohui Li carried out the BASF project on nylon production modeling, while completed a comprehensive review paper about ATRP reaction engineering. Professor Qiang Ren in his one-year Visiting Scholar appointment published 2 excellent papers on one-pack epoxy foaming by CO2 – an amazing idea.
5/ It is a great year of graduation: three doctoral (Chad Smithson, Ali Mohammad Rabea, Erlita Mastan) and 1 Master’s (Dan Gariepy). Yong Qian received his PhD from SCUT. With 3 PhD’s, 1 Master, 2 PDF’s (Qi Zhang and Xiaohui Li), 2 Visiting Scholars (Qiang Ren, Lei Yang), and 2 visiting graduate students (Yong Qian and Noal Wei) trained and gone, the group size is suddenly reduced to the current 5 PhD’s (Hermes Zhu, Darko Ljubic, Lei Lei, Sharon Li, Yuan Gao) and 1 PDF (Weifeng Liu). We will have two visitors coming in 2016 and we are planning to recruit 4 graduate students (PhD’s preferred). We would like to remain a group of about 10 people on going. My research emphases are two-fold: one targeting most fundamental problems and the other aiming at industrial development.
6/ My sabbatical leave was in the academic year from July 1 2014 to June 30 2015. I spent the first part of 2015 in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering is my former classmate at GELC in Sun Yat-Sen University in 1984/1985 before I came to McMaster). The group was perfectly self-governed and greatly functioned in my absence. While all made effort and contribution to the group’s well-being, my particular thanks go to the leadership of Darko Ljubic who is amazing in taking care of my research accounts and managing the labs (frankly, I could not survive with the strange Mosaic system adopted by McMaster), Erlita Mastan for all the assistances with my paper works, Dr. Qi Zhang for co-supervising several graduate students.
7/ The group’s well-being allowed me focus on what I really wanted to get done with the accumulated stuff through the 5 years of Department Chair service. In HK, I completely re-did my Polymer Reaction Engineering course notes. It’s ~300 PPT slices having ~1000 equations re-derived (to prove my brain still working). Professor’s job is teaching and research. I feel great that I spent the great effort to fulfill my job. Another thing I did was to complete editing the special issue of Macromolecular Reaction Engineering “Polymer Reaction Engineering in China”. I feel it’s also my duty to do the work. Almost every day I started 7 AM and completed 11 PM in HKUST. Besides the course notes, I spent almost all the time to revise papers!
8/ As a professor, the happiest thing is to see your students grow. Our people are doing really well. I always felt like more than I received big prices when I heard from colleagues that my students are doing excellent! This year, I travelled so much and I heard so much. Not mention every event, here are two highlights. In October 4-7 CSChE Annual Meeting at Calgary, Dr. Santiago Faucher was elected as the President of the Society. I felt really proud. In March 22-25, I visited Hefei at the invitation of Prof Bean Yang, who spent a year with us at MAC and is now the Department Chair of Anhui University Chemical Engineering. I was surprised to meet so many Zhu’s people. Prof Xiao came from Nanjing. A faculty member was Youqing Shen ’s PhD student. Another faculty was my student when I was at ZJU 30 year ago. Indeed, the highest prize for a supervisor is: tao (peaches) and li (plums) all over the world (In Chinese, tao Li means disciples).
9/ On all of your behalf, I collected two major awards in 2015: Distinguished University Professor is the highest honour McMaster can bestow to its faculty members. It is meant to recognize the complete scholar, who has demonstrated a sustained record of excellence in teaching, learning and service. The maximum number of positions is restricted to no more than 2% of all full-time members of faculty. A vacancy occurs only when any retires. The Faculty of Engineering Research Achievement Award is to honour a faculty member whose accomplishments and contributions are of national and/or international significance and/or have had a transformative impact on their field of research endeavour.
10/ I also felt a kind of accomplishments that I explored the mountains and waters in Hong Kong and Hangzhou. Most people think HK is only a shopping paradise (going shopping mall immediately increases my blood pressure). It’s absolutely not true. The natural sceneries in HK are just superb. I hiked MacLehose Trail. It was a real venture to some scenic spots on its wild side trails like Ma On Shan, Sharp Peak and Tai Mo Shan. In one event, three of us (Professor Chen Guohua, Professor Gao Furong and myself) came down from Tiu Shau Ngam in dark! In Hangzhou, after 2 years of continuous effort, I completed all the trails of about 300 km. I felt great standing atop of a mountain in a hurricane weather seeing cloud flying underneath. The moment inspired me to conclude “if you cannot make yourself happier by accomplishing more, make yourself miserable first and happy feeling will follow after”. See Zhu’s theory of Life and Happiness: http://polymaczhu.weebly.com/life--happiness.html.
In a few hours, we will be in 2016! Thank you all for the hard work and accomplishments. Thank you all for the Christmas greetings. The year of 2015 is great. The year of 2016 will continue to be great for us. You all have my very best wishes for the success for he happiness!
Shiping Zhu
December 31, 2015
1/ We have every reason to celebrate 2015! We made a record year of research productivity. Look at the data: The group has published 30 papers with 10 more papers accepted: 25 from Mac group and 15 from collaboration (mainly with ZJU).
2/ The superstar of the year is: Erlita Mastan, who published 4 papers. Erlita probably holds the record over the past five years, with a total of 7 first-authored and 3 co-authored (possibly 1 or 2 more to come). It’s amazing. It is not easy to derive the most fundamental and desirable ATRP’s MWD and PDI equations. Her thesis became one of the few in the department rated as outstanding in every category for awards. Other superstars are: Hermes Zhu who published 3 papers; Song Guo 3; Chad Smithson 2 with one in Advanced Materials; Yong Qian 2 in Green Chemistry; Ali Mohammad Rabea 2. Almost every group member in the group published at least one paper.
3/ Our citation record looks great. I just checked Web of Science and Google Scholar. SCI has reached >8500 (H=50) and Google Scholar is only 300 short from 10000 (H=54). The annual Google Scholar citation is over 1000.
4/ The research success of the year could also be attributed to 3 superb postdoctoral fellows and 1 Visiting Scholar: Dr. Qi Zhang assisted supervising several graduate students, while made the pioneering contribution to ionic liquid as versatile media for PISA; Dr. Weifeng Liu made great effort in succeeding the AFTON project on high temperature CSTR functional polyolefins, while completed three major review papers with Dr. Pingwei Liu (who is at MIT doing PDF work); Dr. Xiaohui Li carried out the BASF project on nylon production modeling, while completed a comprehensive review paper about ATRP reaction engineering. Professor Qiang Ren in his one-year Visiting Scholar appointment published 2 excellent papers on one-pack epoxy foaming by CO2 – an amazing idea.
5/ It is a great year of graduation: three doctoral (Chad Smithson, Ali Mohammad Rabea, Erlita Mastan) and 1 Master’s (Dan Gariepy). Yong Qian received his PhD from SCUT. With 3 PhD’s, 1 Master, 2 PDF’s (Qi Zhang and Xiaohui Li), 2 Visiting Scholars (Qiang Ren, Lei Yang), and 2 visiting graduate students (Yong Qian and Noal Wei) trained and gone, the group size is suddenly reduced to the current 5 PhD’s (Hermes Zhu, Darko Ljubic, Lei Lei, Sharon Li, Yuan Gao) and 1 PDF (Weifeng Liu). We will have two visitors coming in 2016 and we are planning to recruit 4 graduate students (PhD’s preferred). We would like to remain a group of about 10 people on going. My research emphases are two-fold: one targeting most fundamental problems and the other aiming at industrial development.
6/ My sabbatical leave was in the academic year from July 1 2014 to June 30 2015. I spent the first part of 2015 in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering is my former classmate at GELC in Sun Yat-Sen University in 1984/1985 before I came to McMaster). The group was perfectly self-governed and greatly functioned in my absence. While all made effort and contribution to the group’s well-being, my particular thanks go to the leadership of Darko Ljubic who is amazing in taking care of my research accounts and managing the labs (frankly, I could not survive with the strange Mosaic system adopted by McMaster), Erlita Mastan for all the assistances with my paper works, Dr. Qi Zhang for co-supervising several graduate students.
7/ The group’s well-being allowed me focus on what I really wanted to get done with the accumulated stuff through the 5 years of Department Chair service. In HK, I completely re-did my Polymer Reaction Engineering course notes. It’s ~300 PPT slices having ~1000 equations re-derived (to prove my brain still working). Professor’s job is teaching and research. I feel great that I spent the great effort to fulfill my job. Another thing I did was to complete editing the special issue of Macromolecular Reaction Engineering “Polymer Reaction Engineering in China”. I feel it’s also my duty to do the work. Almost every day I started 7 AM and completed 11 PM in HKUST. Besides the course notes, I spent almost all the time to revise papers!
8/ As a professor, the happiest thing is to see your students grow. Our people are doing really well. I always felt like more than I received big prices when I heard from colleagues that my students are doing excellent! This year, I travelled so much and I heard so much. Not mention every event, here are two highlights. In October 4-7 CSChE Annual Meeting at Calgary, Dr. Santiago Faucher was elected as the President of the Society. I felt really proud. In March 22-25, I visited Hefei at the invitation of Prof Bean Yang, who spent a year with us at MAC and is now the Department Chair of Anhui University Chemical Engineering. I was surprised to meet so many Zhu’s people. Prof Xiao came from Nanjing. A faculty member was Youqing Shen ’s PhD student. Another faculty was my student when I was at ZJU 30 year ago. Indeed, the highest prize for a supervisor is: tao (peaches) and li (plums) all over the world (In Chinese, tao Li means disciples).
9/ On all of your behalf, I collected two major awards in 2015: Distinguished University Professor is the highest honour McMaster can bestow to its faculty members. It is meant to recognize the complete scholar, who has demonstrated a sustained record of excellence in teaching, learning and service. The maximum number of positions is restricted to no more than 2% of all full-time members of faculty. A vacancy occurs only when any retires. The Faculty of Engineering Research Achievement Award is to honour a faculty member whose accomplishments and contributions are of national and/or international significance and/or have had a transformative impact on their field of research endeavour.
10/ I also felt a kind of accomplishments that I explored the mountains and waters in Hong Kong and Hangzhou. Most people think HK is only a shopping paradise (going shopping mall immediately increases my blood pressure). It’s absolutely not true. The natural sceneries in HK are just superb. I hiked MacLehose Trail. It was a real venture to some scenic spots on its wild side trails like Ma On Shan, Sharp Peak and Tai Mo Shan. In one event, three of us (Professor Chen Guohua, Professor Gao Furong and myself) came down from Tiu Shau Ngam in dark! In Hangzhou, after 2 years of continuous effort, I completed all the trails of about 300 km. I felt great standing atop of a mountain in a hurricane weather seeing cloud flying underneath. The moment inspired me to conclude “if you cannot make yourself happier by accomplishing more, make yourself miserable first and happy feeling will follow after”. See Zhu’s theory of Life and Happiness: http://polymaczhu.weebly.com/life--happiness.html.
In a few hours, we will be in 2016! Thank you all for the hard work and accomplishments. Thank you all for the Christmas greetings. The year of 2015 is great. The year of 2016 will continue to be great for us. You all have my very best wishes for the success for he happiness!
Shiping Zhu
December 31, 2015