PART 1 From Tianjin University to Cambridge: a scientific research journey guided by interests

1. Please introduce your educational experience and reasons for choosing biochemical materials for research?

From 2015 to 2019, I studied chemical engineering at Tianjin University as a bachelor; from 2019 to 2020, I studied at the Department of Chemistry, Cambridge University, supervised by Professor Tuomas Knowles; from 2020 to 2021, due to the pandemic, I worked as a research assistant for nearly one year at the project team of Professor Yu Ziyi of the CUNJC; at the end of 2021, I returned to the UK to study for a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, and I am currently continuing my second year of Ph.D. study in the research group of Professor Tuomas Knowles.

Interest led me to choose this research path. Now I am mainly engaged in the research of biomaterials, which is a cross field of biology, chemistry and materials. In fact, I have been interested in chemistry and biology since middle school. I chose chemical engineering as a major in university, and gradually found my own interest—technology development, such as new material technology development, bioengineering technology development, etc...

2. In China, "Biology, Chemistry, Environment, and Materials" are often referred to as the "Four Bad Majors". What motivated you to join this field and continue to choose further studies? Ultimately, how did you find and identify research interests in microfluidics?

When I was a freshman, I found that I was more interested in engineering development than basic theory, so I switched from the major of applied chemistry, which was biased towards science, to the major of chemical engineering, which was biased towards engineering, and I wanted to do some more practical research;

In my junior year, I studied microfluidics technology through the microfluidics course, and I have been interested in it ever since. During the summer vacation of that year, I contacted Professor Chris Abell, the then PVC for Research at the University of Cambridge, met Professor Ziyi Yu who was then a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge, and recommended myself for a short-term internship at the University of Cambridge. Through the three-month summer internship, I realized that microfluidic technology as a platform technology can be connected with many technologies, and my undergraduate scientific research projects at TJU also have many points of integration with droplet microfluidics, therefore I finally determined that this is my research direction.

During my master's degree, I found that the research group of Professor Tuomas Knowles also carried out research on microfluidic technology. I was fortunate to join his team for Ph. D. and continue my research.

3. What do you think are the differences between the academic and life at Cambridge University and those in China?

Cambridge University is a small place but rich in scientific research resources, and it is an excellent place for academic research.

From my personal experience, the learning style in Cambridge is indeed different from that in China. Cambridge prefers heuristic education. Mentors pay attention to the cultivation of students in many aspects, especially in macro and top-level design levels, stimulating students to form their own scientific research ideas, rather than hand-in-hand guidance on research skills. Fortunately, I worked as a research assistant in Cambridge Nanjing Centre for one year, and have accumulated enough experience for scientific research, which made me get started relatively quickly in Cambridge.

PART 2 Innovative ideas in the paper: new bio-ink as a multi-purpose platform technology

4. Congratulations on your paper entitled Bioprinting microporous functional living materials from protein-based core-shell microgels published in Nature Communications in January. Could you please introduce the research innovations and specific research results of this paper? What are the application prospects of it?

Thanks, this is my first paper and I'm very happy. To put it simply, we have developed a new type of bio-ink. This "material + cell" structure can be processed into different shapes by 3D printing technology.

The traditional common bio-ink is a continuous material. We use droplet microfluidic technology to emulsify this continuous material into small droplets and become hydrogel microspheres, realizing the reduction of larger structures to a size of 150 Multiple building blocks on the order of microns. Then continue to use droplet microfluidic technology to place cells in these building units, and use 3D printing technology to print these hydrogel microspheres into 3D structures. good material. On the one hand, the material has good biocompatibility and gas permeability as a hydrogel material, which is suitable for the needs of biological culture; on the other hand, according to different uses, different cells are encapsulated into the hydrogel, and the printed material Can carry out different biological applications, flexible and convenient.

To sum up, what we have developed is a versatile "platform technology", which can theoretically combine different types of microorganisms with different functions into materials, develop biological living materials with different functions, and apply them in different fields, such as biomaterials, tissue engineering, etc. This is one of the innovations and highlights of this research.

Another highlight of the paper is that, in addition to demonstrating the good functions of the new bio-ink, we also try to demonstrate how to solve a difficult problem in the field of traditional bio-3D printing: to realize the control of the cell microenvironment while printing the material structure, that is, by means of droplet microfluidics, the hydrogel microspheres can be manipulated on the micron scale to control the cellular environment.

At present, I am in the stage of Ph.D., and will continue to develop this material in the research group, combined with the application requirements of tissue engineering and organ printing.

5. From a simple idea to the final output of this research, what difficulties did you encounter during the entire research process, and how did you overcome them?

My research work is biased towards practical application, and some difficult problems will be encountered in the experiment process. The basic system of this project was developed in Cambridge during my master's degree. Professor Yu suggested that I deepen it on the basis of my master's research results. However, since I knew little about 3D material printing before, it is not easy to carry out new development and design on the basis of original materials. This was a bottleneck for me in the project design stage before the experiment, and it took a certain amount of time to form a research architecture system. Through a lot of paper reading and experiments, and finally inspired by a paper by a senior student, the project took shape.

PART 3 From ignorance to independence: achieve growth and transformation in practice

6. In your research career, who or what has had a significant impact on you?

Looking back on my mental journey of scientific research, I can summarize it into three stages, which is a growth process from ignorance to independence:

The first stage is the undergraduate period. Chemistry is a preponderant discipline of TJU. Many undergraduate students will do scientific research. At first, I focused on the field of synthetic biology, participating in some competitions and doing some experiments by myself. At that time, the scientific research was more of a spontaneous behavior based on interest, focusing on whether it was "interesting". The current academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Yuan Yingjin of TJU gave me a lot of guidance at that time, which made me gradually get started from a novice who was ignorant of scientific research;

The second stage is the summer internship at Cambridge University. At that time, the fellow students in the group helped me a lot, so that I gradually had some independent scientific research projects. They passed on their experience and taught me how to arrange scientific research time, operate experiments, interpret data, and carry out scientific research thinking in the next step. But at that time, I did not have an independent and complete scientific research idea; the third stage is to carry out scientific research at the Cambridge Nanjing Centre and study for a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.

Professor Yu Ziyi, one of the corresponding authors of this paper, had an important influence on my scientific research. It was under his guidance that I was gradually able to independently conceive projects and be truly responsible for a project independently. My experimental skills and ability to control the project have also been greatly improved. This experience has enabled me, who is now in the second phase of Ph.D., to control the project with ease and clearly know what I want to do next;

Professor Tuomas Knowles, my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge, also gave me a lot of useful guidance on my research direction. He is easy-going and open-minded. My research group has many projects and my project is the less "mainstream" one, but I can get the full support of him. He is very tolerant of projects, and willing to support students with really good ideas.

7. As a research assistant of the microfluidics project team, how do you feel about the experience of working and scientific research at Cambridge Nanjing Centre in 2021?

I think CUNJC is a good place for scientific research.

First, the research hardware is complete. As a front-line scientific research experimenter, my first impression of the CUNJC is that it provides good equipment for scientific research personnel, even equipped with some equipment that I don’t have in Cambridge. The equipment is new and rich, combined with the rich resources of universities around. It is very convenient to carry out research experiments there.

Second, I got solid academic training in CUNJC. The teachers and students of the project team got along well and happily. As mentioned earlier, during the year of research in the CUNJC, Professor Yu had an important influence on my research. I have received careful training and guidance from him. Thanks to this experience, I can quickly adapt and get started with the doctoral study at Cambridge.

This year's scientific research, study and life experience are very unforgettable and fulfilling for me. I hope to have the opportunity to visit Nanjing again in the future.

PART 4 Scientific research view: engineering-oriented and training-based

8. How do you see the relationship between doing basic research and applied research?

Regarding the relationship between the two, I have a very agreeable point of view, "Science is beautiful, but it is engineering that changes the world". It is great to be able to solve major scientific problems, but the solution of scientific problems is inseparable from technology development.

In my scientific research, I have also made a choice between basic research and applied research, and I have learned many examples of successful development from basic research to engineering research, and then to applied research. My supervisor, Professor Knowles, has achieved good results in both basic research and applied research. He studied the mechanism of Alzheimer's disease in his early days, focusing on the mechanism of misfolded proteins leading to a series of phase transitions, making the protein change from a soluble state to a pathogenic state; later he became interested in microfluidic technology and turned to this field, and now the research group led by him focuses on technology development with the purpose of proteins studying. It has developed a number of microfluidic application technologies and has 4 spin-off biological companies.

At present, the mode of my research group is to focus on technology development first, use the developed technology to solve scientific problems, use technological progress to promote the overcoming of scientific problems, and then develop new technologies based on emerging scientific problems, forming a virtuous circle. To some extent, the advances in basic science and applied science are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.

Taking my own practice as an example, my current research is to develop platform technology. I hope to promote this technology to more application scenarios in the future, build disease models, and explore and solve basic scientific problems related to cancer.

9. From your own academic experience, what qualities, ways of thinking and abilities do you think are inseparable from doing scientific research? Do you have any good habits or suggestions that you can share with your fellow students?

As a novice who has just done scientific research for a short time, from a practical point of view, my sincere suggestion is to train a lot:

First, do a lot of experimenting. Practical experience is the most useful, especially for the engineering field, we need to develop good habits in the laboratory, through experiments under different conditions, thinking about why this is the case and why it is not the case;

Second, read more papers. I used to spend four to five months on paper reading, and it is very important to keep an eye on the latest developments and trends in your research field;

Thrid, practice logic and learn to tell stories. From my experience in writing and revising papers, writing English papers for non-native English speakers is difficult, but telling a good story and writing a good paper have something in common.

For engineering projects, it is particularly important to clarify the reasons and value of the research, which requires a strong logical expression ability; for theoretical research, logic training is also very important. High quality papers have correspondingly high requirements for the logic. Paper reading at the advanced level is not limited to understanding the research work itself, but to analyze its internal logic, and to understand how the paper tells a good story well. And then extended to the logical sorting out of your own scientific research projects.

10. For future development, what are your academic plans and research ideals?

My plan is to develop towards an academic path. Currently, I am very interested in my research field and it is good for me to keep doing it. My short-term goal is to successfully complete the doctorate and do post-doctoral related work, and my long-term goal is to go to a university to engage in teaching and research work.