Are the ordinary undergraduate students far away from the high-end scientific research?
On the International Campus, ZJU, a group of undergraduates are emerging at the international high-level academic platform-- a sophomore student, published an SCI literature review as the first author, and won the special award and the honor of naming rights in “Mathematical Contest In Modeling / Interdisciplinary Contest In Modeling (MCM/ICM)” in the United States.
The International Campus, ZJU is a “special education zone” established in 2016. It is jointly founded by Zhejiang University and the top universities in the world. The cooperation sides send management personnel, form teaching teams, make the enrollment strategies and formulate the course plans. Currently, there are two Sino-foreign cooperative education joint institutes, namely Zhejiang University - University of Edinburgh Institute, ZJU (ZJU-UoE Institute) and Zhejiang University - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute, ZJU ( ZJU-UIUC Institute).
Even though the campus is young, in the research from undergraduates, ZJU has achieved outstanding results. 8 sophomores (Grade 2017) won the high level prize in international competitions or published international academic journals. It accounts for 3.8% of the total number of sophomores.
Xiang Yuchen, an undergraduate in ZJU-UoE Institute, is one of the amazing 8 students. Xiang Yuchen is a native of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. He published a review article as the first author. The article is about the optimization strategy of autologous chondrocyte transplantation (ACI), on the journal of “Orthopaedic Transformation”. The Journal of “Orthopaedic Translation” is one of the publication resource of the Science Citation Index (SCI), which has very strict selection criteria and evaluation procedures. SCI is an internationally recognized major search tool for scientific statistics and scientific evaluation, and it is also a basis for scientific research evaluation.
Sophomores in ZJU-UIUC Institute also behaved well in the international academic platform.
In the 2019 American MCM/ICM, the undergraduates, Lin Hangzheng and two partners in the same major participated in this competition as a group for the first time. They took part in the competition of topic B (dispatching drones: developing air disaster response system). In the end, they were unanimously favored by the judge. They won the special prize and gained the honor of naming rights.
The American MCM/ICM is an international competition, sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Application. It is a mathematical modeling competition based on real-world problems. The content of the competition covers economic, management, environment, resources, ecology, medicine, security and many other fields. Each year, nearly 10,000 teams from the United States, China, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries participate in this competition. It requires three (undergraduate students) as a group to complete all the work from modeling, solving, verifying to essay writing on the specified questions within four days.
In the 2019 engineering ethics paper competition of the American Civil Engineering Competition in the Central Pacific Area, Zhang Yu, a 2017 undergraduate student, won the first place in China Area and the fourth in the world. The American Civil Engineering Competition is a long-established competition founded by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In the 2019 competition, there were six competition items, including retaining walls, concrete canoe, water treatment, transportation, sustainable design, and thesis.
This engineering ethics paper competition mainly examines the participants’ critical thinking ability and communication skills. It requires the participants to write a thesis to discuss the ethical issues of civil engineering on the basis of understanding and thinking about the civil engineer's guidelines, and then to demonstrate the main points through on-site defense, and to conduct in-depth communication and discussions with the on-site judges in the Q&A session.
At the 14th Asian Conference on Computer Aided Surgery, Hong Kaiwen, a undergraduate student in Grade 2017, and two partners from the same department, published a high-level paper and made a report, which is one of the 13 outstanding papers selected through in-house communication and appraisal.
Their thesis focused on and developed around the preliminary design concepts of robotic surgery training systems. The main process included setting design parameters based on kinematics and operational path requirements, simulating and analyzing through simulation software tools, and expanding the driving, sensing and control functions of the robotic arm with the existing open source robotic arm development kit. Then, they verified the design concept through experiments.
The sophomore students obtained international scientific research recognition. According to analysis from both the participants and instructors, they think that gaining these achievements is related to the educational and training model in International Campus, ZJU.
“Research review writing is generally a matter of postgraduate training. As a sophomore student, Xiang could write a research review and publish it in the SCI journal, which proves that the content, logic and the understanding of the scientific questions in his review have been recognized by other professionals in the field. It is not common in domestic and even high-level foreign universities.” said Professor Xu Suhong in ZJU-UoE Institute.The author knows that ZJU attaches great importance to the cultivation of undergraduate’s research ability. The real goal is to cultivate innovative talents with independent growth and cross-border cooperation ability.
Dean of the UoE Institute, ZJU, professor Ouyang Hongwei, said, “my understanding of education is that we give students three things, which will benefit students for lifelong time -- the first is to inspire thinking, the second is self-learning ability, and the third is the strength from excellent model.
Professor Ouyang Hongwei said that we hope to cultivate students with research consciousness and the ability to face and deal with the unknown. ZJU-UoE Institute developed students’ research capabilities through the course design of “big discussion class”and extracurricular research training. ZJU-UoE Institute also developed the inquiry course similar to “the Global Challenge”. The after class training included reading and writing academic papers, forming discussion groups, etc., which aims at cultivating talents with independent growth ability.
“Currently, in the era of globalization, students should learn to cross-cultural communication and cooperation.” said professor Li Er’ping, Dean of the ZJU-UIUC Institute. In these two institutes, four majors correspond to the majors of six or seven colleges in the main campus, ZJU, including compute, signal and electricity, electric, construction engineering, machinery, energy, and optoelectronics.
“This breaks the boundaries of traditional engineering disciplines. It does not establish departments or institutions according to the nature of the discipline. The institutes focus on the cross-integration innovations, including smart cities, energy exploring and sustainable development, high-performance materials, advanced manufacturing, and engineering-based medical technologies. We hope to encourage different professions in different majors to work together, and raise the talents with cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary knowledge to face the hot field of engineering in the future society.” Li Er’ping said.
“Publishing high quality academic articles are not our goal for raising undergraduate students. However, in the process of students’ development, we encourage then to challenge themselves and embrace the unknown. Xu Suhong analyzed that through training, a sophomore has the ability to read, extract, and summarize the literature in a short period of time after enrollment. He will not be afraid of the unknown scientific issues and the exploration of freedom.
Professor Xiao Yan in ZJU-UIUC Institute stated, “to a good university education, the interaction between students and professors is very important. International Campus, ZJU, makes the interaction between students and teachers more closely through the education model of classroom teaching, discussion, and the residential college tutor system. Our laboratories are also always open to students, encouraging students to participate in or actively, carry out various research activities. We also have the opportunities for students to work as internships in with high-level academic institutions and famous companies outside the school, and allow students to participate in a variety of academic and innovative activities domestic and abroad.”