《Shanghai Daily》Molecular materials expert wins top prize

    Professor TianHe of East China University of Science and Technology won the top individualprize at the 2019 Shanghai Science and Technology Awards which were announcedon Tuesday.

    He has beenworking on organic functional molecular materials for more than 30 years andmade achievements in areas including functional molecular machinery,supramolecular polymers, dye-sensitized solar cells and novel molecular probes.He has published more than 500 SCI papers and holds 60 patents in China. Hispapers have been cited more than 30,000 times by researchers from all over theworld, including Nobel Prize laureate James Fraser Stoddart.

    The universityfaculty also won six first prizes, 13 second prizes and a third prize. Five ofthe first-prize programs and nine of second-prize ones were led by theuniversity while the others involved its researchers.

    Ti Gong

    Professor TianHe from East China University of Science and Technology delivers a speech aboutmolecular machines.

    He Jifeng, deanof the software engineering institute at East China Normal University, and histeam, won a top prize with technologies for software testing, analyzing andassessment to ensure development of safe and credible core controlling softwarefor key industrial equipment.

    Theirtechnologies have supported the success of many important space missions inChina, including the launch of the Fengyun-4 satellite and the docking ofShenzhou-8 and Tiangong-1.

    The Universityof Shanghai for Science and Technology harvested two first prizes and foursecond prizes. Five were led by the university and one second-prize programinvolved its teachers.

    In one of itsfirst-prize programs, a team led by Professor Liu Ping developed a high-performancecopper alloy for the production of overhead wires that provide power forhigh-speed trains.

    Team member ZhouHonglei said China had been using German wires in high-speed railways but from2008 it began to use products developed by the team. With their high electricalconductivity, mechanical strength, thermostability and anti-friction capacity,the wires have enabled China’s high-speed trains to increase their speed from100 to 400 kilometers per hour. They have also helped produce new output valueof over 3 billion yuan in the past three years and saved at least 1 billionyuan in electricity costs each year in the operation of high-speed trains.

    Currently, about70 percent of the railway systems that run at 350 kilometers per hour areequipped with its products.

    Professor LiuPing from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology won the topindividual prize at the 2019 Shanghai Science and Technology Awards.

    Shanghai OceanUniversity’s hairy crab breeding and raising program also won a first prize.

    The varieties ofhairy crabs in Shanghai had been of low quality, low output and low price. Ateam from the university led by Professor Wang Chenghui, after 10 years ofresearch around the world developed a new variety called “Jianghai 21” whichgrows fast, is large and has a high yield. The team has also established thelargest database for hairy crabs.

    Its crabbreeding and raising technologies have been adopted in a number of aqua farmsaround China, including in Jiangsu Province’s Sheyang County, the country’slargest crab breeding base.