Postgraduate Education in 2016----Institute of Engineering Thermophysics

By December 2016, the number of postgraduate students reached 252, including 115 PhD students and 137 masters. Students have formed a solid force in the research team.

In 2016, the Wu Zhonghua elite class, consisted of 45 undergraduates from 3 grades, has been set up by the institute and the University of Science and Technology of China. With continuous support of the UCAS’ summer camp program, the institute successfully organized the summer camp entitled “Power, Energy, Environment - Approach to IET” to attract excellent students persistently. The outstanding campers of 2016 were awarded with the Freshman Scholarship. 21 master’s degree students and 16 recommended PhD students were admitted for the school year of 2017, among them 17 are from 985 Project Universities and 12 from 211 Project Universities. 70% of the admitted PhD candidates were master-doctor combined students. The quality of student resources has been kept continually as outstanding.

In 2016, 6 more researchers got the qualification to tutor PhD students and 16 more researchers to tutor master students. The institute organized training for new tutors who were employed within the last 3 years, and made arrangement for tutors to participate in the teaching seminars of spring and autumn semesters. Professor Nie Chaoqun and Professor Kong Wenjun gave lectures to share their teaching experiences and skills. All these activities helped improve the teaching quality.

The institute accomplished the 4th round of the National Discipline Rank Evaluation in the majors of Power Engineering and Engineering Thermophysics. The evaluation was made based on the teaching team and resources, education quality, scientific research, social service and academic reputation. The institute has successfully passed the evaluation of master’s degree authorized major of Environment Science and Engineering.

Based on the deployment of CAS and UCAS, the institute has concentrated in promoting the incentive mechanism of graduate scholarship in 2016. A first-grade scholarship has been set up to encourage the students to lay a sound foundation at the beginning of their school years. 42 students from the class of 2015 won this scholarship. We have also increased the student grant amount to ensure the students a stress-less study without worrying about the basic life needs. At the same time, an Early Warning system has been adopted to identify any problem or difficulty at an early stage of each student’s study. The institute has continually implemented the inspection of Master-Doctor combined students and advanced the date of mid-term examination of PhD candidates to April. In order to improve the quality of graduate education, we have also promoted the anonymous review of PhD thesis, and adopt the “Detection System for Academic Misconduct” to inspect all the student dissertations.

The number of graduates in 2016 reached 59, 23 with PhD degrees and 36 with master degrees. The graduate employment rate has been continually maintained at 100%, with major employers being: R&D institutions accounting for 29%, enterprises and public institutions accounting for 42%, higher education institutions accounting for 7%, further studying domestic/abroad and others accounting for 22%.

Various activities, organized by the Graduate Student Union, Graduate Student Party Branches and the Youth League Committee, have been carried out successfully, including academic communications, artistic and cultural activities, sports, voluntary services etc. The academic activities have effectively promoted knowledge sharing and academic innovation by the virtue of the platforms such as “Lectures of Invited Experts from other institutions”, Scientific seminars, “Academic Activity Month—Energy and Sustainable Development Forum of IET” and “Postdoctoral Lecture” etc. To improve graduates’ skill levels, we have also organized academic software training, essay writing training, resume writing training and professional etiquette training. Various sport activities and games including basketball, table tennis, badminton, swimming, brisk walking and orienteering were held and popular with both teachers and students. Voluntary services were organized including “The Public Science Day”, “Caring Donation”, “Teachers’ Day” and “Linking Love”.

In 2016, Academician Jin Hongguang won the “ZhuliYuehua Excellent Teacher Award”. The PhD candidate Wang Kai won the “CAS president Award”. PhD candidate Chen Yi won the “ZhuliYuehua Excellent PhD Award”. PhD candidate Wang Ruiyin won the “China Science Group Environmental Protection Scholarship”. 10 students won the “National Scholarship”, 53 won the “Excellent Student Award of UCAS” and 132 won the “Annual Postgraduate Scholarship of IET”.

In June 2016, PhD candidate Wang Yifei won the first prize of excellent thesis in the “Academic Activity Month—Energy and Sustainable Development Forum of IET” and Zhang Yuan was awarded with the “Outstanding Post Doctor”.

In August 2016, the annual meeting of the “Wu Zhonghua Award Foundation Accreditation Council” was held in the institute. Professor Chen Qun from Tsinghua University, Professor Liu Qibin from IET and Professor Qu Zhiguo from Xi’an Jiaotong University won the “Wu Zhonghua Young Scholar Award”. 12 postgraduate students won the “Wu Zhonghua Excellent Student Award”. 2 of them, Zhang Bai and Wang Yifei, were from IET and others from Tsinghua University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Northwest Polytechnical University, Beijing University of Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry.