The first cohort students were graduated from Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology this year. The series of interviews with the graduates from Class of 2021 will show their stories with GTIIT in the past four years. Here is the story about Wu Zhilin, a student of Class of 2021 from Biotechnology and Food Engineering Program.

Name: Wu Zhilin

High School: Jinshan High School, Shantou

Program: Biotechnology and Food Engineering

Received offers from: Microbiology in the School of Medicine, Hebrew University, and won the HUJI International PhD Talent Scholarship

Awards:

GTIIT first degree of Chancellor Scholarship (2017-2021)

2020 GTIIT Dean's List Scholarship

First prize of poster exhibition section at the 2018 Guangdong Biomechanics Annual Meeting

What does it look like to take the learning initiative into one’s own hands? Perhaps we can find the answer from Wu Zhilin. Once she finds her interests, she will do her best. After graduating from GTIIT, she got the chance to go straight into a doctorate program in Hebrew University. For her, the happiest thing in these four years is that she has accomplished her studies and built a deep relationship with her friends.

Learn actively and challenge myself

At first, Wu Zhilin feared that she couldn't adapt to GTIIT's English teaching environment. While four years later, her English ability has been greatly improved. "I'm not so good at English when I was in high school, but I think I should be brave and give myself a chance to be better. Besides, English is very important in my future study and work." 

Zhilin said that adapting to having classes and talking with teachers in English were the biggest challenges she encountered when she came to GTIIT, but these difficulties can be overcome with hard work. "I recite words and read original English books in my spare time, and also complete the task of learning English for 100 days continuously on a Wechat activity to adapt myself to English thinking as soon as possible. I didn't brave enough to ask questions for the first time, so I asked my friends to go together. Gradually, I got used to it, and found that asking questions is actually not so difficult as I thought it would be."

Zhilin tells the junior students that the ability to study independently is particularly important in the university. "University is not like high school. There is no one to supervise your study. The teachers will not give you all the knowledge, because the class is limited and there is too much to learn. So we have to learn to find the answer by ourselves." 

Wu Zhilin recalled that the course "Food Analysis" in her junior year. The teacher taught the food safety standards, laws and regulations of Europe, the United States and Israel, but asked students to learn about the regulations in China after class. "I learned about China's main food safety standards from my predecessor who has been working on food laws and regulations for a long time. This knowledge helped me a lot in my later courses, including factory design, entrepreneurship classes, product design projects, etc." Zhilin encourages the junior students to learn actively and independently, and overcome the challenges in study with hard work.

For Wu Zhilin, GTIIT is a place to realize her dream. "I wasn't confident enough and didn't believe in my ability previously. At GTIIT, I tried to put forward my own ideas bravely and make efforts to realize them in various projects and presentations. Every time I succeed, the great sense of achievement would make me more confident. " Zhilin once conceived the idea of designing a snack with Chaoshan characteristics, but did not practice it, thinking it was impossible for her to accomplish. On the product design project in her senior year, she tried to put forward this idea in the group discussion and it was recognized by the group members. "I didn't expect that my idea could be approved by my teammates and teacher. And finally we finished the product chocolate with bergamot, and it tastes good!"

Zhilin described her university life as "simple life, busy study and full of harvest". "In the past four years, I've spent most of my time on study, but I learned a lot, and the process of discussing with my classmates also enhanced our friendship, which is the biggest gain for me."

Pursue my love bravely

At first, Zhilin thought food science simply as mixing ingredients. After four years' study, she found that food engineering covered everything from chemical elements to nutrients, from energy transfer to material transfer, from fluid mechanics to packaging materials, from product design to factory design and entrepreneurship planning. Even every bite of snack we eat has a great deal of knowledge behind it, and any change in nature can create another product. "Food science is actually a high technology, using ordinary raw materials and advanced processes to create completely new products."

While Wu Zhilin has studied extensively in the field of food science, she is also exploring her own interests in this field gradually. 

In her sophomore year, Zhilin came into contact with two courses of microbiology, "Basic Microbiology" and "Food Microbiology", and developed a strong interest in microbes, the amazing life with great ability in small bodies. In the summer of her sophomore year, she worked as an intern in the Probiotics Research Laboratory of Jiangnan University, where she further learned about the close relationship between microbes and human beings and their important role. In the summer of her junior year, Zhilin joined Prof. Ka Yin Leung's research project at GTIIT, studying the topics related to microbial resistance. In her further study, she will continue to devote herself to the research of micro-organisms to explore the mysterious species.

Devote myself to scientific research

Wu Zhilin participated in Prof. Ka Yin Leung's research group and study the "Transfer of Antibiotic Resistant and Virulent Genes in Water-borne Bacteria and the Potential Risk to One Health". They collected samples from local frog farms in Shantou to analyze the characteristics of bacterial species, drug resistance and gene transfer, so as to study the acquisition, enrichment, transmission of bacterial resistance genes and their effects on human production and life.

This experience not only enabled Zhilin to learn the experimental design and operation skills, but also helped her to prepare psychologically for the tedious scientific research life in the future. A complete experiment involves numerous simple and repetitive preparations and long waits. "Because it takes time for bacteria to grow, we need to spend a long time on each experiment, usually more than two or three days. Some experiments have more steps to take, so we need to be in the lab from morning to evening. There is a lot of repetition to get the data and the results we want. It's boring, but it's fulfilling when we made it finally."

On the recommendation of Prof. Ka Yin Leung, Wu Zhilin applied for the master program of Microbiology in the School of Medicine of Hebrew University and passed the interview successfully. She also won the HUJI International PhD Talent Scholarship, and got the chance to go straight into a doctorate program if she has a good performance in the assessment after the first year study of the master degree. Zhilin hopes that she can keep her original aspiration on the road of scientific research and return to China after studying.

Text: GTIIT News & Public Affairs

Photos: Wu Zhilin, GTIIT News & Public Affairs