Yuanyuan Shi, PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Antoni Llobet (ICIQ) and Prof. Mario Lanza (Soochow University, China), has defended her PhD Thesis entitled “Materials and Molecules for Pollution Free Clean Energy” (assigned to the Chemical Engineering Department of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili) publicly on October 15th at the ICIQ Auditorium.

The members of the evaluation committee were: Dr. Stefania Privitera, Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems, National Research Council of Italy (IMM-CNR); Prof. Xavier Sala Roman, Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Dr. Fernando Bozoglian, ICIQ.

Dr. Shi did her bachelor in Chemistry at Anhui Normal University (China). In 2014 she joined the Llobet group at ICIQ as a master student and since then has enrolled ICIQ’s PhD programme – while pursuing a second PhD in Nanoscience at the University of Barcelona. She has also recently been awarded the Electron Device Society excellent PhD student award.

Why did you become a scientist? What would you want to achieve as a scientist?

In high school, I got better grades in art than in science, and so my teachers encouraged me to pursue a career in the arts, but at that time I really fell in love with chemistry so I decided to go for a scientific career. That decision was very challenging for me because I was bad at physics, but I succeeded at the end! Basic research is interesting, but I want to do research that has a more practical, or industrial, applications. Right now, I am working with electronic devices and clean energy. I think both fields will be useful for the next generations and, if I end up having my own group, I will combine both.

From the lessons learnt at ICIQ, which one do you value the most?

The mentoring! Antoni Llobet, my thesis supervisor is a very busy scientist, but he always finds the time to talk with me about the research progress and problems. Talking with him can help me understand experiments and mechanisms deeply, he is so knowledgeable! I also feel very grateful for Dr. Carolina Gimbert, who supervised my work in the lab during my master and PhD studies at ICIQ. She is always very helpful, if there’s something that I don’t understand, I can knock at her door and ask her directly. She is always available and gives me very useful suggestions that make me progress fast. I feel very lucky to have received all this help during my PhD!

What ICIQ anecdote you’ll never forget?

It’s very hard! There are a lot of them, but when you try to explain them, none come to mind. I like the environment here, people are sharing ideas and collaborate, they are competitive but not that much, is relaxed and everyone looks happy.

Where are you going next? What will you do there?

I’ll be at ICIQ until the end of November, I need to finish some experiments after I defend my PhD. Then I’ll go back to China to take a short break, but I still don’t know for sure where I will go after that because I have to wait to see if I get the fellowships that I have applied for to support my research as a postdoc researcher. On the long term, I want to go back to China and work as a professor in a university – I want to have my own group and do the research I am interested in!