Date: Nov. 6, 2023

Translator: LOU Qianqian

Wang Zixian, a 2020 Ph.D. student in the cell biology department of JNU’s School of Life Science and Technology, has been nominated for the 2022 Guangdong University Student of the Year, an honor awarded by Guangdong Department of Education. Wang won the National Scholarship for Graduate Students and twice led her team to win the silver medal in the China International Internet+ College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. She has also published two SCI articles as the first author and applied for two patents. 

(Wang Zixian)

During her six years at JNU, Wang has been closely associated with competitions and scientific research. She says she firmly believes that people have to pay efforts before being effortless and scientists should find ways to commercialize scientific research findings instead of only focusing on publishing articles, so as to better benefit the people, the latter proposed by her mentor, Prof. Ma Yi. Now, for Wang, participating in the competition is a good way to commercialize scientific research achievements. 

(Wang and Prof. Ma Yi)

Wang's hard work has paid off. She and her team have twice won the silver medal at Internet+ with their projects Qiming peptide: the first 'disease solution' in the field of global peptide drug research and development in the seventh session in 2021 and Eliminating diabetes: the world's first sublingual diabetes treatment drug in the eighth session in 2022. 

(Wang, second from left, and her team in the seventh Internet+)

(Wang, fourth from left, and her team in the eighth Internet+)

China has the world's largest population of diabetics, and Wang hopes to develop a new hypoglycemic drug targeting that population, with no need to inject. She has repeatedly said she hopes that the project can be implemented and enter the market to break the technology monopoly. I think innovation, which is the main point in doing scientific research, comes from the needs of the market, Wang said. 

The efforts made by Wang and her team are far beyond imagination because the workload in the early stage of drug research and development is quite heavy. 

(Wang and her lab team)

(Wang doing experiment)

In the future, Wang said, I hope we can always maintain our love and enthusiasm for scientific research.”