The university has announced the winners of its inaugural President’s Award. Chen Xirong and Shuai Cijun received the top faculty honor. Let us meet these two outstanding teachers and learn from their example.
Shuai Cijun: Targeting National Needs, Pursuing Research and Teaching in Tandem
Shuai Cijun focuses on China’s national strategies of building a manufacturing powerhouse and a Healthy China. He works on key technologies for laser additive manufacturing of regenerative implants and has developed a number of core technologies at the international frontier, some of them the first of their kind and filling global gaps.
Over the past five years, as first completed author, he has won multiple science and technology awards, including the China Patent Excellence Award and the First Prize of the Jiangxi Provincial Natural Science Award. He has led national-level projects such as key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and special topics under the National Key R&D Program. As first and corresponding author, he has published more than 210 SCI papers, with a strong record of highly cited and hot papers, and his research has been cited by leading scholars worldwide. He holds more than 70 authorized national patents, with patent industrialization contracts worth 163 million yuan. His work has been selected as a national outstanding typical case, and he has for years been listed among China’s most highly cited scholars and the world’s top scientists.
Beyond research, he is deeply committed to teaching and education. He has won two second prizes of the Jiangxi Provincial Teaching Achievement Award, guided students to national competition awards such as the “Challenge Cup” and “Internet Plus,” built provincial undergraduate teaching teams and science popularization bases, and led teaching reform projects on future technology talent training—achieving coordinated progress in research innovation and talent cultivation.
Award Acceptance Remarks: I am honored to receive the first President’s Award. I thank the university for its training and trust, and my leaders and colleagues for their support. The university’s open, inclusive and innovation-friendly atmosphere allows us to focus on research and teaching. This honor recognizes past work but also spurs us forward. I will take it as a new starting point, continue to address national strategic needs, deepen my work in advanced manufacturing, produce more results, contribute to the university’s “Double First-Class” development, and serve China’s self-reliance in science and technology. I will also stay true to the mission of educating people and cultivate more innovative talent to repay the university’s kindness.
Chen Xirong: Rooted in the Classroom, Writing a Story of Education Through Teaching Innovation
Chen Xirong has long stayed on the front line of undergraduate teaching. Rooted in the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, she has worked deeply on classroom teaching reform and course development.
In teaching innovation, she won first prize in the 2025 Jiangxi Provincial College Teachers’ Teaching Innovation Competition and first prize in the industry-education integration category of the National College Teachers’ Teaching Innovation Competition, a historic breakthrough for the university in this national event. Her course development achievements are substantial. She has led the approval of a national online-offline blended first-class undergraduate course, completed six provincial course and case projects and two provincial course-education sharing programs, and received the Jiangxi Provincial Curriculum Ideological and Political Demonstration Course, Teaching Master and Teaching Team, and Second Prize of the Jiangxi Provincial Teaching Achievement Award. She has led more than ten national and provincial teaching research and scientific research projects, insisting that research feeds back into teaching.
In education, she has been named an Outstanding Innovation and Entrepreneurship Mentor of Jiangxi Province and an Outstanding Communist Party Member of Jiangxi Province, and has won various university-level teaching and Party honors. She actively shares teaching development experience, helps young teachers grow, and leads the building of a professional smart course cluster, serving as a model and radiating influence as a Party-member teacher.
Award Acceptance Remarks: I am deeply honored to receive the inaugural President’s Award. For me personally, it is great encouragement, but in my heart it is also a heavy collective medal—it reflects the university’s enduring commitment to frontline teaching and the strong support of my college team, leaders and colleagues. I am grateful to the university for the platform it has built for education, to my colleagues who have walked alongside me, and to the students who have grown with me.
Looking back on my years of teaching, I have always been rooted in the classroom, using national first-class courses such as Principles of Chemical Engineering as my main ground, exploring smart-course reform, integrating Gannan’s distinctive rare earth industry cases into teaching, and striving to deepen the integration of teaching, research and industry. I know that every innovation in the classroom is a responsibility to students’ future. Honor is a footnote to the past and a clarion call for a new journey. As a recipient of the first President’s Award, I feel a heavy responsibility. In the future, I will stay true to the mission of fostering virtue through education, empower new engineering talent training through teaching innovation, and cultivate chemical engineering graduates with solid engineering foundations and sharp innovative thinking. On Teachers’ Day, I sincerely wish all colleagues a happy holiday and fruitful teaching. I will take this as a new starting point, work hard, and contribute what I can to the university’s high-quality development.
