Recently, in the top international journals "Science" and "Natural ", a paper from the research team of Imperial College of Technology in the UK was successively reported. Through experimental analysis and model establishment, membrane materials that can be efficiently applied to crude oil separation were prepared, providing a new idea for achieving low carbon, energy conservation and emission reduction.
Li Siyao
The first author of the paper is Li Siyao, a doctor who graduated from Imperial Institute of Technology. He is a young post-90s generation from Jinxi, Yongjia. He was able to publish articles in top international journals and magazines, and obtained a PhD in engineering from Imperial College, the world ranked eighth in just three years and three months. This included the patient guidance of the tutor, the careful guidance of his senior brothers, and the bonus of luck, but not all of them.
"Born", "Born" and "stay in the laboratory forever", these stereotyped labels attached to Li Siyao, chemical doctor, are just part of this young girl. As a scientific researcher who is often thought by outsiders to be a "art-studying background", Li Siyao gives people the feeling of being a blooming flower calmly, gentle and gentle, but this does not mean that she cannot handle equipment, analyze and test, and endure hard work. In the face of an infinitely broad scientific research career, she knows that the struggle for endurance is just the first step.
A successful scientific research exploration
Li Siyao has long been involved in research on membrane material separation. During her undergraduate and master's degree, she has participated in many related topics with her supervisors. Therefore, she has already made sufficient psychological preparations for the long and boring scientific research path, but the results come faster than expected. When Li Siyao learned that her research was published in the top international journals "Nature" and "Science", she still felt a little rippled in her heart.
"This sense of accomplishment is difficult to describe and cannot be compared with other work. My research is actually relatively technically applied. Compared with traditional energy-intensive distillation and fractionation technology, achieving crude oil film separation can greatly reduce energy demand and obtain good economic benefits. If marketization can be achieved, a lot of resources can be saved. The research results can be recognized by authoritative magazines. I am quite excited to think about it."
Research group
Scientific research is exploring the unknown world and providing effective solutions to unsolved problems. Behind the wonderful scientific research results are the attempts of every scientific researcher day after day. Fortunately, dozens of attempts can make some slight progress, but sometimes the experimental results are unsatisfactory.
Li Siyao admitted that in the early stage of the project, every step of exploration was full of challenges. Her mentor, Academician Andrew Livingston of Imperial College, conceived novel ideas with her and imagined the results that would appear after the experiment was successful. It was very interesting but also very complex and difficult to start.
"In recent years, polymer film separation technology has developed rapidly, and many seawater desalination films have been put on the market. However, there is currently a lack of membrane materials for efficient separation of crude oil, which is mainly because most polymer films cannot achieve high throughput and high selectivity at the same time during the separation process. In recent years, scientists have also been constantly trying to expand ultra-thin film materials to apply them to crude oil separation, such as surface modification and modification of thin film materials prepared by traditional interface polymerization to improve their hydrophobic properties. However, this The modification method limited to the surface is relatively limited to the improvement of membrane separation performance in non-polar solvent systems. Therefore, it is still a difficult problem in the field of energy and chemical engineering all over the world..."
is different from the surface modification that scientists tried before. What Li Siyao needs to do is to modify the membrane material through the overall modification, similar to the concept of aquaporin in the human body, introducing a transmission channel of crude oil molecules into the ultra-thin film. For a long time, the experiment made no progress, and continued to try but failed. Li Siyao once questioned the feasibility of the original idea.
"Crude oil involves one of the membrane separation technology, and the other also involves chemical synthesis technology. This is actually quite different from the chemical engineering I learned. Therefore, during the entire research process, a lot of knowledge was added again, and with continuous adjustments, I found a little idea."
adjusted little by little, making progress little by little. Sometimes a membrane has to be replicated dozens of times to ensure the repeatability of the experimental results. Exploring the meaning of the unknown itself has become the driving force to support Li Siyao to persevere. "I am already lucky to be able to do what I like and do it well. It only took more than three years to verify my guess. This is of course very good, but regardless of whether the experimental results are as successful as expected, this process is worth persisting."
life is not limited
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Relying on this thesis research and always maintaining the top 10% of the major during school, Li Siyao successfully obtained a doctorate degree from Imperial College last year. Her supervisor actively supported her to continue her postdoctoral studies and engage in scientific research, but Li Siyao chose to return to China and turn to the scientific research consulting industry.
"I just returned to China at the beginning of this year and found a job that is equivalent to providing technical services and technical solutions to enterprises. It is not that I am tired of research work, but that I want to get in touch with more content before clarifying the path I will engage in in the future, and understand more about the reality and expand my boundaries."
Although I am a science student and I studied chemical engineering, Li Siyao is not the kind of person who can strictly quantify his goals. "I will give myself a direction. How far I can go depends on my efforts, and I will not say "I will never give up until I achieve my goal." As long as I do my best in everything, I enjoy the process of hard work, but the result is not the most important." Li Siyao has maintained this calm attitude since her school days. Because his parents are busy with business abroad and have never had too much control or demands on Li Siyao in their studies. Li Siyao has been studying consciously and doing things independently since childhood. "I live in school most of the time, and then I received a full scholarship abroad. I rented a house and lived with my parents. I was actually very together. I was always in contact with my phone and video, but they have always been very supportive of any decisions I made. Compared with my academic performance, they care more about my life."
. In the impression of my father Li Jinping and his mother Wu Sufen, Li Siyao has not always been a "child of other people's family" and was quite naughty when she was young. "When we were in elementary school, we worked hard outside and didn't bring her with us. She just couldn't sit still in class, scribbling on the walls, and was often educated by the teacher." Finally, because of our concern for our daughter, the two overcame all difficulties and brought Li Siyao to their side to take care of her.
"We have not high education levels, but junior high school education, and basically cannot tutor the children, so we were asked to board at the teacher's house to study, and the academic performance suddenly improved." Junior high school entered Xiushan Middle School, and high school was admitted to Wenzhou Middle School . Since then, Li Siyao has maintained excellent results. The interest in chemistry courses during her student days made her choose to study at Tianjin University , which ranked first in the domestic chemical engineering major.
"Maybe the teacher has a great influence on me and will focus on cultivating my learning habits. I have never been the kind of person who studies hard, and pays more attention to learning efficiency. During the years I have studied in the UK, I have also used my spare time to travel to cities in all sizes in the UK, and have been to many European countries, but my scientific research work has not been lost."
In addition, in her spare time, she has always served as an undergraduate teaching assistant, and she brought her passion for scientific research to her junior brothers and sisters.
"I think that self-discipline can bring freedom, and there are more possibilities at every node of life. If you know what you want, you have the motivation to try it. Don't worry about making mistakes. This is very common in experiments. Maybe in the end I will return to the road of scientific research, but I believe that my current work experience will become another scene in my life."
In Li Siyao's view, the greatest charm of scientific research lies in using her professional knowledge to help solve human survival and development problems such as environmental energy, and she also wants to do her best to continue to provide new ideas for green, low-carbon, energy conservation and emission reduction. "Scientific research is certainly a huge challenge, but as long as we think of a little impurities or essence we have found in the dark, it can clear some obstacles and avoid some misunderstandings for later generations. It is a great satisfaction."
Source/China Yongjia WeChat public account
