Warm Congratulations to Li Shuangyang for winning the title of Tianjin Municipality’s College Student of the Year 2022!

Li Shuangyang, a doctoral candidate from the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology stood out from 30 candidates and won the title with a handsome majority for his outstanding research work and entrepreneurship practice. He was also awarded the special prize of Wang Kechang Scholarship (only for 10 winners in Tianjin).

Li Shuangyang has been engaged in the research of artificial blood vessels since he became a postgraduate student in 2018. Up to now, he has published 4 SCI papers as the first author or co-first author, including 3 top journals in JCR Q1(IF> 10). In addition, he applied for several patents as the first inventor and won the national scholarship for postgraduates.

Li focuses his research on clinical needs. “At present, autologous blood vessels are still the main substitute for damaged blood vessels in heart bypass surgeries . So patients have to go through a surgery to cut one of their healthy blood vessels before they receive the heart bypass surgery, causing a lot of pain and trouble.” Li then decided to develop small-diameter artificial blood vessels that would save patients from two surgeries. He successfully developed a kind of small-diameter artificial blood vessels with precise visualization in vivo after numerous failures, and applied for a patent as the first inventor. With the advantage of a short preparation process, good biological safety, visualization function, and lower cost, Li’s artificial blood vessel product has completed the preclinical safety testing and entered the phase of large animal experiments.

To quicken the pace of product implementation, Li set up a technology company. In 2021, he led a team to participate in the top innovation and entrepreneurship competitions in China, the China College Students’ “Internet Plus” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and China College Students’ Entrepreneurship Competition, and won two national gold medals.

As an entrepreneur representative, Li shuangyang once gave a report to Zhang Gong, Mayor of Tianjin Municipality during the Tianjin parallel session of the National Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation Week. In addition, he is the only student entrepreneur who entered the list of “Innovation China” Youth Entrepreneurship-Tianjin Under 30s. His personal story of innovation and entrepreneurship was taken as a typical case of “Emerging Engineering Education” and was first reported in the program of China Economic Lecture of the CCTV finance channel and then widely covered by many media outlets such as China Science Daily and China Youth Daily.

Li Shuangyang is also an active volunteer committed to community welfare. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he carried out more than 600 hours of volunteer service. He initiates an annual donation of 9,000 yuan to a middle school at Tanchang county, a remote area in Southwest China together with members of his research group. As the executive chairman of the university graduate student association, he organized various activities to enrich the campus cultural life; and as the chairman of the University’s Sports Association, he gave full play to his expertise as a national fitness coach and held many lectures to help students keep fit scientifically.

In the colorful journey of youth, Li will continue to transcend himself, so as to make greater contributions to the healthy China Initiative.

By Chu Jingyi

Editor: Eva Yin