Hou Xu, a double-employed professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and the School of Physical Sciences and Technology of Xiamen University, said about his experience in studying and administering: "People around them are happy for them when they do a good job, and they can help when they do not do well. In general, it is important to be rewarded with diligence, a healthy mindset, and a grateful heart to let yourself work and live at your own pace. ”
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the periodic table of chemical elements and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the world's most authoritative chemical academic organization. Chengdu Business Daily - Red Star News reporter recently learned from the official website of iupac that in order to commemorate, iupac and the International Network of Young Chemists (iycn) have selected 118 young chemical scientists around the world to endorse the chemical elements on the periodic table of chemical elements... They are all "elemental spokespeople".
The names of nine young Chinese chemists appear on the "Global Young Chemists' Periodic Table", of which Hou Xu, a young scientist from Chengdu, was selected to endorse the 100th element "fermium (fm)". Like these peers, his research is considered by Iupac to represent one of the directions the discipline of chemistry will go in the next hundred years.
At present, Hou Xu is a double-employed professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and the School of Physical Science and Technology of Xiamen University. It is understood that this year, the Chinese Chemical Society also selected a "Periodic Table of Elements of Young Chinese Chemists", and Hou Xu was also selected, endorsing the No. 33 element "arsenic (as)".
How is the "Xueba" refined?
"The first two years of undergraduate are important"
Hou Xu was born in 1983, a native of Chengdu, attending Jinma Street Primary School and Chengdu No. 21 Middle School in primary school and junior high school, and graduated from Shude Middle School. In 2002, he was admitted to the "Innovative Talent Class" of Sichuan University with excellent results and studied biomedical engineering.
Hou Xu's "Innovative Talent Class" allows you to choose a major according to your personal interests, and to some extent enjoy the treatment of graduate students. For his own scientific research, Hou Xu is full of gratitude for this class: "It has given us many opportunities to enter the laboratory in advance and have the opportunity to contact the content of scientific research in advance." ”
Before entering the university, Hou Xu was a standard good student and prepared for the examination in a down-to-earth manner. At the undergraduate level, on the one hand, he maintained a down-to-earth and diligent study habit and established a method of scientific research thinking; at the same time, he actively participated in campus activities, joined the student union learning department, edited student journals, and maintained the balanced development of all aspects of ability.
In his junior year, Hou Xu applied for the spark program in the school, received a small fund, and began to do scientific research projects with several junior students, and the project lasted for two years, and won excellence at the end of the project. After graduating from the university, Hou Xu was sent to the National Nanoscience Center jointly established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and Tsinghua University to pursue a doctorate in 2006, and began to produce scientific research results in 2009.
Talking about this, combined with his own experience, Hou Xu, who is now a class teacher, wants to suggest to the majority of undergraduate and graduate students who are still in the opening season that they should clarify their goals as soon as possible. "The first two years of entering the school have a great impact on the development of a person behind. Heaven rewards diligence, first tighten and then loosen. He said that every course should be learned well first, and at the same time, it is necessary to actively participate in the social activities of the school. Because for scientific researchers, communicating with people and coordinating resources is also an important factor affecting the success or failure of scientific research projects in the future.
Inducted into the American Chemical Society's scifinder chemistry field
Future Leaders give up their Harvard university jobs and return home
In 2010, Hou Xu applied for a full scholarship program from the United Nations International Energy Agency to represent China in Melbourne, Australia, to attend the International Summer School, where he met dozens of outstanding young scientists from different parts of the world. He described the experience as "broadening his horizons" and gaining more confidence from it.
After graduating with a doctorate, Hou Xu applied for the opportunity to go to Harvard University in the United States to engage in postdoctoral research. He moved to the United States in January 2012, where he worked for nearly three and a half years. In 2014, he received the Harvard Postdoctoral Career Development Award. In July of the same year, Hou Xu was selected as the future leader in the field of chemistry in the field of scifinder of the American Chemical Society, one of 18 young chemical scientists selected from around the world.
"Three and a half years later, I got an offer from Harvard Medical School as a lecturer." He said, "I met my current wife in Boston, and I had a child later, and out of family considerations and my original intention to return to China to develop, I finally decided to return to China to develop." "The biggest gain brought to Hou Xu in his days at Harvard is to take his vision to another level, further enter the international academic circle, and understand the international scientific research culture and thinking."
For his achievements, Hou Xu stressed that his scientific research path has benefited from the guidance and help of many good teachers and friends like Xu Xi and Academician Jiang Lei. "They gave a lot of opportunities, and then they worked harder to grasp these opportunities, step by step, feeling that they were lucky to meet so many good teachers." He said, "I think diligence is really a very good character as our Chinese nation." Especially abroad, I can feel that our Chinese is very diligent, and everything is to be diligent and diligent. ”
Study interface science
It involves application prospects such as air purification, seawater desalination, and smart city materials
"Anything has an interface, like water and oil together, there's an oil-water interface. For example, on the surface of a solid, whether it will adsorb liquids or other solids, or whether it can clean itself like a lotus leaf. Hou Xu told reporters that the scientific research his team is now engaged in mainly focuses on interface science and intelligent materials.
In addition to basic research, in terms of application prospects, the research direction of Hou Xu's team includes seawater desalination, air purification, the use of nanomaterials to efficiently desalinate seawater into drinkable pure water, and the combination of functional liquids and porous intelligent film materials for the first time to propose a responsive liquid gating concept. "We use liquids as a special functional structural material, and use them in oil-water separation, sewage treatment, air purification and haze." Hou Xu said.
In addition, Hou Xu and his research group also studied some special physicochemical phenomena of micro- and nano-scale pore materials to develop intelligent pore materials. This type of material responds to the entire environment. For example, as soon as the external temperature changes, the material changes the material transport properties in the pore channel in response to the change in temperature. "For example, a pore material is originally hydrophobic, and once it is cooled down, it becomes hydrophilic." He said that this material can adapt to the environment, and there is hope for some intelligent applications in the future.
For the selection of the "Global Young Chemist Periodic Table", Hou Xu said that he was very happy when he received the notice. The 100-element he endorsed, "fermium", is not only special for the 100th anniversary, but is also used in honor of Nobel Laureate physicist Enrico Fermi. "It's both an honor and a responsibility." He said. Chengdu Business Daily - Red Star News reporter Zeng Naga, Li Yanqin, Wang Yao
New/Smelled/Name/Word
Neptunium (fm), tone (fèi)
Element No. 100 of the Periodic Table , " Fermium ( fm ) is an artificial radioactive metal element named in honor of Nobel laureate nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi , whose chemical properties are similar to rare earth elements , and in aqueous solutions , the main oxidation state is +3.