I have participated in the 8-week Nextrode project ‘Extensional Properties of Battery Electrode Slurries’ as a summer intern with the University of Birmingham Energy Materials Group at the end of my penultimate year. As a member in this project, I contributed my expertise in extensional data analysis, evaluating relevant theoretical models, as well as writing summary manuscript. To put my theoretical knowledge into practice, I extracted filament thinning data of various battery electrode slurries from videos captured by high-speed camera using Matlab, then attempted to analyze and fit the data into different capillary thinning and break-up models via nonlinear regression. Despite working from home only because of COVID-19, I kept in regular contact with my supervisor and delivered presentations showing my research outcomes in front of the Energy Materials Group in UoB every two weeks. Moreover, from the active weekly group meetings, I gained an insight of various hot, novel ideas and greatly extended my notion of materials science by a series of concepts on improving battery manufacturing, ink formulation in cell making, recycling, etc., which further boosted my enthusiasm to dive deeper into the profound mysteries behind materials.

In this role I provided support to the School of Metallurgy and Materials on open days. I conversed with prospective students and their guardians and shared my experiences about the course and university life.

• Founded student groups together with other student reps to record and reflect opinions of academic lives, conveyed student suggestions to student forum meetings every two weeks, communicated with staff members.• Promoted relationships between teachers and students, increased student ratings for teachers by 5%.• Established personal leadership and public speaking skills by shouting out in lectures, encouraged students to express ideas and feelings.

• Co-hosted online careers fairs of over 3,000 students on Weibo, shared application tips, studying experiences, analysis of high school students’ future challenges under COVID-19 situations and gave useful advice. • Shared application experiences with Chinese students on University official WeChat account, gave practical suggestions to high school students as one of the first ever cohort of Chinese students joining undergraduate courses directly with Gaokao results.• Published a 3-min video of sending positive messages of overcoming COVID-19 and introducing University of Birmingham on ICS (The International Channel Shanghai).

By participating in U21 Global Citizenship delivered by Common Purpose, I have learned a lot and exchanged great ideas from students all over the world. As a result of this programme, I have been able to successfully demonstrate that I am able to take rapid action on my chosen UN Sustainable Development Goal, able to collaborate with diverse networks, challenge preconceptions and better inform people’s perspectives, operate across hierarchies and live your values and integrity. I am awarded this badge when they complete the following requirement: Completion of Global Citizenship (8 hours over 3 weeks) – an experiential asynchronous course where participants advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and gaining a Pass grade for each of the skills assessments.Universitas 21 is a truly global network of 27 universities that span 18 countries and 19 time zones. Universitas 21 partnered with Common Purpose to deliver U21 Global Citizenship, an online leadership development course. The course was open to 2,800 students from all universities across the U21 network, meaning participants engage with and learn from students across the globe. By developing ideas together, across borders and time zones, students developed skills needed to thrive in the 21st century whilst tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems, outlined in the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG). Participants reflected on the improvement in their cultural competency and awareness throughout the course and how they, as individuals and as groups, can turn their learning into valuable global action.