On the afternoon of November 21th, Professor Zhibo Li of Qingdao University of Science and Technology was invited to visit the college of Materials Science and Engineering of our school, and gave an academic report entitled Design and synthesis of stimulation-responsive polyamino acid materials in the center of teachers’ activity of the college of Materials. The report was presided over by Professor Jiaping Lin, Executive Vice-Dean of graduate School.  Professor Changsheng Liu, Dean of the college of Materials and Professor Shaoliang Lin, assistant to the Dean, and many other teachers and graduate students attended the report.

In the report, Professor Li introduced his group's recent research work on synthesizing stimulus-responsive polymer materials with modified amino acids. Unlike traditionally temperature-responsive polymers, the temperature-responsiveness of polyamino acids depends not only on the chemical structure of the monomer, but also on the molecular conformation of the polymer. Therefore, different materials of temperature-responsiveness can be designed by using conformational transition. For example, temperature-sensitive gels constructed by polyamino acids can control the transformation of intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds by changing the temperature, realizing the in-situ conversion of physical gels to chemical gels, and solving the problems of high cost and difficulty in solid-phase synthesis of polypeptide gels.  After the report, Professor Zhibo Li answered the questions raised by the participating teachers and graduate students, and put forward some ideas on the research of poly amino acid related issues.  This report broadened the research ideas of teachers and students, and had guiding significance for the future research of related polymer materials.

Before the report, Professor Zhibo Li also visited the test platform of college of Materials under the leadership of Professor Jiaping Lin, and had an in-depth exchange and discussion with professor Mengqing Zhu who in charge of the platform, and affirmed the operation of the test platform and the current management mechanism.

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Zhibo Li received his Doctor's Degree from the University of Minnesota System in 2006 and did the postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles in the same year. After returning to China in 2008, he worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2014, he was transferred to work in Qingdao University of Science and Technology and was funded by Taishan Scholars Advantage Characteristic Discipline Talent Team Support Plan. A series of research work has been carried out in the fields of design, synthesis, structure and properties of responsive polyamino acid polymer, injectable hydrogels based on polyamino acids, biomimetic synthesis of water-soluble silicon dioxide nanosheets, and self-assembly of organic semiconductor molecules regulated by multiple weak interactions. He published more than 90 papers in Science, Nature, J. Am. Chem. Soc, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Mater., Macromolecules, Commun, etc.  He was cited more than 1600 papers in SCI, and the highest single paper was cited more than 400 times.  In 2011, he was awarded the IUPAC Professor Jiang New Materials Youth Award, and served as a member of the international Advisory Board of MACRO2012 conference of IUPAC in 2012. In 2012, he was funded by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.