From our correspondent — Recently, at the 51^st Geneva International Invention Exhibition held in Geneva, Switzerland, Professor Jiang Linhua, an alumnus of the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, majoring in Chemical Technology (PhD intake of 2006), led the R&D team for the achievement “Real-time Sensing and Manipulation Technology for Microscopic Chemical Processes in Process Industry”. The work was awarded the Grand Prix of the Jury, the highest honor of the exhibition. Known as “the gold prize among gold prizes”, this supreme award is selected from all gold medal winners and requires unanimous approval by the jury. It represents international recognition of the technology’s innovation and industrialization potential.

Professor Jiang Linhua (Member of Academician Duan Ning’s research team) and his team have long been engaged in clean production technologies at the frontlines of process industry operations. First, the team solved the bottleneck problem that process industries cannot directly measure high-concentration liquids in real time. It established for the first time a spectral library of typical chemical species preserving their original valence, morphology and phase states, and developed the world’s first real-time monitor capturing original chemical information of substances, achieving a 0-to-1 breakthrough in high-end equipment. Second, the team uncovered the mechanism behind excessive pollutant generation in multi-component chemical reactions. It pioneered a chemical manipulator that intervenes in the competition between thermodynamic and kinetic mechanisms to enable optimal control of critical reaction points. Third, the team developed large-scale integrated digital and intelligent equipment with real-time sensing and dynamic manipulation capabilities that combines intelligent and automated technologies. The equipment reduces liquid, solid and gaseous pollutant generation at the source and realizes coordinated production and pollution abatement.

Co-organized by the Swiss Federal Government, the Government of the City of Geneva and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Geneva International Invention Exhibition is one of the world’s oldest, largest and most rigorously judged invention events. Together with the Nuremberg Invention Fair in Germany and the Pittsburgh Invention Show in the United States, it is known as one of the World’s Three Major Invention Exhibitions and hailed as “the Olympics of Inventions”. The Grand Prix of the Jury sits above the Gold Medal category as the highest distinction, signifying world-class innovation.

Professor Jiang Linhua obtained his PhD in Chemical Technology from our University in 2009. He is currently Second-tier Professor (Tenured Distinguished Professor) and Doctoral Supervisor at Tongji University. His research focuses on fundamental theories, key technologies and complete sets of equipment for clean production. He has undertaken more than 30 research projects including national key R&D programs, national major science and technology special projects and National Natural Science Foundation projects. His research achievements feature fully independent intellectual property rights. His honors include two Second-Class National Science and Technology Progress Awards, the Grand Prix of the Jury (top prize of the Geneva International Invention Exhibition), one CIIF Grand Prize (top award of China International Industry Fair), seven ministerial first-class awards, 60 international and domestic invention patents, and over 100 SCI-indexed papers.