Description

List of Research Projects

Project 1 Hand-Eye Coordination Algorithm for Minimally Invasive Surgical Robot

Typical minimally invasive surgical robots are generally used for remote operations. This involves doctors carrying out surgical operations according to endoscopic images, through a handheld device to control the distal surgical robot. This approach has a variety of advantages, the robot is more stable and accurate than the doctor’s hand and it’s very useful for surgeries that need to be operated in the X-ray environment, such as some orthopedic surgeries. The sharing of genuine medical resources can be realized in the future for doctors and patients who are isolated by geographical location. Excellent doctors can be accessible to people around the world. The hand-eye coordination algorithm studied in this project is established by mapping the correlation between hand movements and the endoscopic images to enhance the surgeon’s presence. Hand-eye coordination, including control of the robot, coordinate system transformation and so on, is one of the core technologies used in the remote operation problem.

Project 2 Optimal Design of Neural Electrode Coating

Neural electrode coating is aimed at assisting people with neurological disabilities by stimulating or recording neural tissue and creating a link between the nervous system and the outside world. Recent progress in nanotechnology has been applied to improve neural electrode coating with nanomaterials, such as conducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires and hybrid organic-inorganic nanomaterials. This is done to enrich the application of neural electrodes, reduce the damage to neural tissues and to make the electrode work longer. A dierent combination of materials, dimensions for coating and manufacturing processes can be considered for change. In the project, both software simulations and experiments are possible. You can choose to do simulations of your own design or take advantage of the advanced manufacture and test technology at the university to conduct experiments. The objective of the internship is to contribute to our long-term project with new ideas and designs based on what we are doing now.

Project 3 Key Technology in Endoscopic Surgical Robotics Based on Augmented Reality

As a modern minimally-invasive surgery, endoscopic techniques are widely used in the eld of surgery. However, currently orthopedic robots are only applicable to traditional open surgery, their working principles, operation mode, as well as the software and hardware systems simply do not apply to endoscopic surgery. In this project, some leading-edge algorithms regarding multi-modal image registration, automatic segmentation, high quality visualization, and precise planning are proposed for important anatomical structures in the musculoskeletal system. Subsequently, a surgical navigation system based on Augmented Reality is established on the basis of real time segmentation, non-rigid registration and 3D reconstruction for intra-operative ultrasound and endoscopic images. This is aimed at solving problems of soft tissue deformation and tracking. Finally, comprehensive, light, and smart mechanical structures and control systems for surgical robots in endoscopic orthopedics will be designed and integrated with our previously self-developed surgical navigation and robotic system, to achieve the ultimate prototype of “Endoscopic Surgical Robotics Based on Augmented Reality”. The accuracy, eectiveness and reliability of the whole system will be validated through phantom experiments and clinical trials, with the goal of the mass clinical application. The research outcome of this project will promote the personalization, safety, accuracy, and minimalizing the invasiveness of endoscopic orthopedics, thus leading the direction of the international eld of orthopedic robotics.

Project 4： The Research on Digital Manufacturing of Customized Surgical Templates in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery based on Virtual Reality and 3D-Printing

Oral disease is one of the most common diseases for mankind. The treatment of oral diseases, oral and maxillofacial surgery, aims to treat the entire cranio-maxillofacial complex: the anatomical area of the mouth, jaws, face, skull, as well as associated structures. However, the limited intraoperative visibility, especially the anatomical intricacies, makes this type of surgery a challenging procedure. Additonally, the accuracy and stability of the operation is very dicult to guarantee. In this project, the integration of computer-assisted surgical planning, virtual reality, computer graphics and 3D-Printing, the methodology of the design and manufacturing of customized template is presented for oral and maxillofacial surgery, aiming to meet the unique demands of China’s clinical application. Based on the relevant basic theory and innovative algorithms, a computer-assisted preoperative planning system and virtual simulation system will be realized to determine the optimal surgical path for oral and maxillofacial surgery. Subsequently, the system for digital design and manufacturing of customized templates will be presented. Through phantom experiments and clinical trials, the inuence of the factors such as the geometrical contours, material properties, and processing parameters of the devices on the processing quality and clinical accuracy will be revealed. Therefore, the parameters can be optimized to demonstrate its accuracy, validity and reliability. Ultimately, an integrated platform for digital design and manufacturing of customized templates will be formed, aiming to provide innovative technical methods for the personalization, digitalization, and minimization of the invasiveness of oral and maxillofacial surgery, and greatly improve the patient’s general quality of life.

Project 5 Surgical Robot End-Effector Mechanism Design

The surgical robot, to be designed and researched on, will be used in surgical operations. It is mainly used to accurately drill, saw and grind the bone. In order to meet the requirements of surgical operation, the robot end-eector should have the following functions:

1) Clamping and replacing dierent surgical power tools eectively, such as a surgical bone drill and bone saw.

2) Driving the surgical power tools to move along and rotate around its axis. This project mainly researches and designs an advanced mechanical structure for the robot end-eector to meet the functionality requirements mentioned above.

Project 6 Highly Efficient Dehumidification Cooling Technology

The rotary desiccant wheel cooling system operates on principles of adsorption, dehumidication and evaporative cooling. The system adopts natural substances as a working uid and can be driven by low grade thermal energy such as solar energy. Due to these advantages, the solar powered rotary desiccant wheel cooling system is recognized as a preferable alternative to the conventional vapor compression air conditioning system and has obtained increasing interest in the past years. Based on whether an auxiliary refrigeration system is adopted, the systems are divided in two categories: separate solar powered rotary desiccant wheel cooling systems and hybrid solar powered rotary desiccant wheel cooling systems. The objectives of this project are to further develop the latest dehumidication cooling system and to provide information on potential applications. The objectives of the highly ecient dehumidication cooling technology are: a) Understanding of technologies for sustainable energy production, conversion and utilization; b) Understanding of limitations and opportunities of the dehumidication cooling technology; c) Gain experience, through challenges and opportunities, during the testing and simulation of the dehumidication energy systems; d) Develop your own vision for a dehumidication cooling scenario in the future.

Project 7 Fault Diagnosis for Wind Turbines Based on the Sound Visualization

In this research program, we aim to establish a fault diagnosis scheme for wind turbine systems based on the super resolution of sound visualization of radiated sound signals. Visualization approaches with capabilities of characterizing a moving source from dierent components of the wind turbine are developed for fault diagnosis. The combination of image processing and the support vector machine can be used to approximate the locations and types of faults on the blades and gears by diagnosing the procedure. It can be used to simulate the system’s behavior as a result of fault progression in the future to enable failure prediction. Successful research outcomes will create an eective tool, based on the radiated sound signal, for predictive maintenance solutions for wind energy.

Project 8 Guided Wave-Based Structural Health Monitoring

Many large-scale structures are made of metallic or composite tubular structures with joints, junctions, stieners or weld lines. If damage such as corrosion and fatigue cracking, which may be induced by manufacturing faults, improper use, wear, fatigue, impact, sabotage, etc., is not detected on time it can lower the integrity of critical sections of the tubular structures signicantly. Potentially leading to the catastrophic failure of the entire structure, with disastrous consequences. Over the past decades, there has been a substantial advancement in materials science and signal processing/ pattern recognition techniques, e.g. advanced sensors and sensor network, guided ultrasonic waves, articial intelligence. This is associated with the exponential development of informatics, computing and communication technologies. These developments have paved technical paths and presented a unique opportunity to address the fundamental issues and break through certain technical barriers in developing a guided wave-based damage identication algorithm for large-scale structures. Work of the guided wave-based structural health monitoring project consists of:

• 1) Studying the basic knowledge of PZT actuators and sensors, guided waves and signal processing;
• 2) Experiments on how PZT actuators can excite guided waves in metallic structures and capture guided wave signals by using PZT sensors;
• 3) Processing the guided wave signals captured from intact and damaged structures and studying how to identify the damage in dierent kinds of structures, such as plates and tubes

Project 9 Smart Material Actuation

This project mainly focuses on the integrated design of a precision actuation system based on smart materials. This study includes the physical/phenomenological modelling of the nonlinear properties of smart materials. The smart material based actuator is designed taking the coupling eects of electricity, magnetism, mechanics and temperature into account, and is optimized based on the energy conversion eciency. Furthermore, the design of an output mechanism, a compliant mechanism or amplier for example, and its coupling eects with the actuator are also considered. This study aims to form a practical design and optimization method for a smart material based actuation system. This project includes mathematical modelling, electromagnetic analysis, dynamic analysis, simulation and experimental work. Both theoretical research and engineering implementation are included.

Project 10 Vibration Energy Harvesting

Through theoretical and experimental investigations, the dynamic model of electromechanical coupling of a multi-directional vibration piezoelectric energy harvester is presented and validated. The parameter analysis and optimization design is provided, which is conducive to the application of vibration energy harvesting in practice. The project mainly investigates the dynamic characteristics of the nonlinear vibration energy harvester. This study aims to reveal the relationship between design parameters and the performance of vibration energy harvesters, and to provide theoretical and technical support for the design and development of self-powered microelectronic devices. The project aims to propose a multi-directional vibration energy harvester for uncertain sources in the ambient environment.

Project 11 Hand Gesture Recognition through Soft Wearable Devices

While most wearable gesture recognition approaches focus on the forearm or ngers, the wrist maybe a more suitable location for practical use. This work will focus on the design and validation of a real-time gesture recognition wristband. It will be designed based on soft wearable devices for recognizing air gestures and surface gestures with distinct force levels. Healthy subjects will perform an initial gesture recognition experiment, followed by other experiments. Classication accuracies for the all experiments will be computed. These results will demonstrate the feasibility of producing soft wearable devices for wrist-based gesture recognition that can potentially be integration into a smart watches or other wrist-worn wearables for intuitive human computer interaction.

Project 12 EMG Decoding and Prosthetic Hand Control Based on Motor Unit Action Potential

This project proposes to investigate the technology of decoding the motor unit action potential train (MUAPt) from high-density surface electromyography (EMG). This technique will be applied to an advanced dexterous human-machine interface and the corresponding system integration. High-density EMG signals and intramuscular EMG signals will be recorded concurrently to verify the decomposition algorithm and to extract spatial information of MAUPts. The relationship between hand movements and MUAPt will be analyzed to build a new control model which can realize simultaneous and proportional estimations of multiple degrees-of-freedom (DOF) kinematics. The recording channel conguration of the high-density surface, EMG, including electrode number and spatial distribution, will be optimized to improve the decomposition performance of MUAPt. This project will not only realize the simultaneous and continuous control of prosthetic hand wrist and ngers, but also provide enabling techniques for human-machine interface and dexterous prosthetics with high transmission rate.

Project 13 Soft Robots

Project Description and Objectives Soft robots, dierent from traditional rigid robots, are emerging due to their ability to deform large amounts for adaptive and compatible interactions with their environment. To achieve this ability, the robots are usually made of soft functional material based actuators (such as, dielectric elastomer actuators, pneumatic actuators, shape memory polymer actuators). Until now, dierent soft robots have been presented for grasping, crawling, swimming and jumping. However, the design, modeling and control of soft robots is still a challenge. This project mainly focuses on investigating soft sensing and the actuation principle, design of the bioinspired soft mechanism, and control of soft robots. We also aim to employ the developed soft robots for wearable and rehabilitation applications.

Project 14 Optical Fiber Communication

Through theoretical and experimental methods, the fundamental theories, technologies and the transmission schemes of optical ber communication will be explored. This will help realize high-speed data transmission in optical bers, which provides fundamental evidence for developing ber networks in the future. This project mainly investigates the high-speed data transmission in optical bers, including the investigation of optical devices, optical sub-systems and system levels. This project aims to reveal the capability of optical bers to handle large capacities of data transmission, and provide theoretical and technical support for the design and development of various optical networks. This project aims to raise scientic training and technological exploration for multi-principle students.

Project 15 Design of High Performance Antennas Using Novel Microwave Structures and Materials

Modern wireless communication requires the design of advanced antennas with high performance including increased gain and high directivity. Therefore, the application of new concepts such as metamaterials and gradient surfaces oer promising possibilities to enhance the performance of antennas. The project oers a chance for students to apply cutting edge microwave concepts to the design of practical antennas.

Project 16 Neural Patterns Smong Different Cultures for EEG-based Emotion Recognition

Emotion plays a signicant role in our daily life and has been described as the ‘driving force’ behind motivation, endowing meaning to all human interactions. As we all know, various environments and cultures inuence a human’s physical peculiarity, the way humans think and many other aspects. Humans all over the world may have dierent emotional patterns or possess similar emotional characteristics. Recently, multicultural research concerning emotion recognition has provided explanations for cross-cultural dierences as well as similarities. This project mainly investigates the emotional neural patterns among dierent cultures using EEG signals. As we all know, facial expressions for dierent emotions are similar all over the world regardless of culture. The study aims to nd out whether people sharing the same emotion have similar neural patterns and to discover more facts about human emotions.

Project 17 Model Tests on Marine Renewable Energy Devices

Renewable energy has occupied the forefront of energy supply studies around the world. With the advancement of science and technology, the use of renewable energy has expanded towards the ocean in the last decade. Particularly, tidal current and wave energy are regarded as the two kinds of marine renewable energy with the greatest prospects. In this project, models of tidal current turbines and/or wave power generators will be tested in a ship model towing tank, to measure their hydrodynamic performance, which is the key to marine renewable energy extraction.

Project 18 Multidisciplinary Aero-hydro-servoelastic Analysis of Offshore Floating Wind Turbines

Consequent to Asia’s rapid development in wind energy, a demand has arisen to develop a comprehensive medium for high delity tools. These tools should able to address the increasing complexity of oshore concepts, turbine upscaling and wake/wind farm optimization. The aim is to overcome the limitations in existing modelling tools by providing a platform that is capable of capturing non-linear dynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, ow proles, distributed control surfaces and most importantly, hydrodynamic interactions in a unied description. The challenge is to develop higher-delity solutions accompanied by computation eciency and capabilities within Asia for wind turbine AHSE analysis. The purpose of this project is to develop a medium to high delity description of the aero-hydro-servo-elastic models for oshore wind turbine analysis and to propose an innovative ow control solution and device for improved power and load performance.

Project 19 Vortex Induced Vibration of a Catenary Riser

For this project, three-dimensional spectral/hp computations will be executed to study the fundamental mechanisms of vortex shedding in the wake of a catenary riser at a low Reynolds number of 100. The project will focus on three aspects:

1) Flow over a catenary cylinder with a free stream parallel to the plane of curvature. We will numeri cally investigate the wake dynamics behind the catenary conguration at Re = 100 in order to characterize the wake topology. In addition, the evolution of hydro-forces and eld variables along the span distance will be examined.

2) Wake characteristics of stationary catenary risers with dierent incoming ow directions. Through the three-dimensional numerical investigation, ow past a freely hanging stationary riser in a catenary shape, where the angle of incoming ow direction with respect to the plane aligned with the CR will range from = 0°~90° at a low Reynolds number of 100.

3) A direct numerical simulation study of ow past a freely vibrating CR/curved circular cylinder. Vortex induced vibration of a long exible cable at a Reynolds number between 100 and 200, corresponding to laminar and early transitional ow states, will be studied in this project.

Project 20 Near-infrared Spectroscopy for Discrimination Between Polymethyl Methacrylate and Methyl Methacrylate

With the growing use of plastic around the globe, especially in electronic devices, rapid and autonomous plastic sorting processes have become increasingly necessary in the recycling industry. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been proven to be an eective tool for sorting in the recycling, agriculture and pharmaceutical elds. However, there is limited information on its eectiveness in sorting two widely used plastics with very similar reectance spectra’s, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and methyl methacrylate (MMA). This study initially introduces spectroscopy as a whole and then explores the use of NIR spectroscopy for discriminating between PMMA and MMA (in the wavelength range of 900-1700 nm). The chemometric method of principal component analysis (PCA) is used to create a model which can be used in the future for automated sorting purposes.

Project 21 Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Nanofiber Membrane and its Application for Removal of Nonvolatile Contaminant in Water

Although Membrane Distillation (MD) has been extensively studied for desalination, it has other applications such as removing diverse of solutes from water and concentrating non-volatile substances. Emerging contaminants, such as various pharmaceutical or personal care products (PPCPs), could give rise to adverse ecological and human health impacts. MD oers the possibility of producing a clean stream while concentrating emerging contaminants and pathogens present in wastewater in order to facilitate their chemical elimination. MD is a thermally driven separation process, driven by vapor pressure dierences existing between the porous hydrophobic membrane surfaces. However, the current MD membrane still suers from limitations such as low permeate ux rates and the wetting of the pores during the MD process. In this study, the super hydrophobic property of the membrane is obtained by adding surface-modifying macromolecules into the dope solution. The electrospinning technique is used to fabricate this kind of nanober membrane.

Project 22 Cloning and Functional Characterization of Rice Male Sterile Genes

The life cycle of owering plants alternates between diploid sporophyte and haploid gametophyte generations. Male gametophytes develop in the anther compartment of the stamen within the ower and require cooperative functional interactions between gametophytic and sporophytic tissues. During male reproductive development numerous biological events occur, including cell division, dierentiation and degeneration of somatic tissues. The degeneration consists of four concentric cell layers surrounding and supporting reproductive cells as they form mature pollen grains through meiosis and mitosis. To understand the mechanisms of male plant reproduction, we are combining systematic biology (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabonomics) with other approaches such as genetics, cell biology, biochemistry, and structure biology. This is done to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying each biological process of male reproduction, such as cell-to-cell communications, programmed cell death, and fatty acids metabolism.

Project 23 Molecular Mechanism Controlling Inflorescence and Spikelet Development in Rice and Barley

Rice and barley, model grass plants, form specialized morphology of inorescence and spikelet, which determine grain yield. Using various approaches such as forward and reverse genetics, biochemistry, cell biology etc. we are investigating the molecular mechanisms such as MADS box genes and the regulatory network involved in the morphogenesis and development of inorescence and spikelet in rice and barley.

Project 24 Molecular Characterization of GMOs

As more and more transgenic crops such as maize and soybeans have been approved and consumed as foods and feeds, people have become increasingly concerned about the safety of transgenic organisms. Molecular characterization of transgenic organisms is the basis of safety assessments of transgenic organisms. We are developing new detection methods to identify the changes that occur at genomic, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolic levels. The changes will be compared to the changes between the transgenic line and non-transgenic control line and between the transgenic line and conventional cultivated lines, laying a foundation for safety assessments.

Project 25 The Study of the Paternal Transgenerational Effects of Tobacco Smoking/nicotine Via the Underlying Epigenetic Mechanisms.

According to current studies, some paternally acquired traits induced by environmental factors can be retained in gametes and passed down to the ospring. The molecular mechanism underlying this phenomenon however remains unclear. Our previous studies showed that tobacco smoking/nicotine treatments can lead to abnormal sperm function, and these abnormalities have been associated with DNA methylation changes within some gene promoter regions. We also found that nicotine induced a depression-like phonotype in mice and elevated the DNA methylation level within the CpG island shore region of mmu-miR-15b in murine sperm. This epigenetic information is then passed down to the ospring and imprinted in the brain tissue leading to hyperactivity in the lial generation of mice. Based on prior studies, our project intends to rstly establish a mouse smoking and nicotine treatment model. Secondly, analyse the DNA methylation patterns and sncRNAs expressive prole in the spermatozoa of smoking and nicotine treatment mice and in the brain tissue of the ospring. Our project mainly involves the epigenetic information retained in murine mature spermatozoa after nicotine treatment, such as DNA methylation and sncRNAs. These may inuence the embryonic development of the ospring. The molecular mechanism underlying this paternal transgenerational eect on the ospring mice will also be illustrated, which can provide new evidence of the eects of paternal smoking on the physical and mental health of the ospring.

Project 26 Epigenetic Effects and Molecular Mechanisms of Pebp1 Gene in Spermatogenesis

Prior studies have demonstrated that testicular Pebp1 gene defects in male mice can lead to a signicant decline (90%) in fertility. Our preliminary experiments have also found that nicotine-induced hypermethylation of pebp1 genes leads to reduced expression levels, thereby aecting the ERK1 / 2 activity. This is accredited to the fact that its expression level positively correlates with abnormal sperm development. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms. Dependent on the results, the project intends to research the PEBP1regulational pathway, PEBP1- signaling pathways – molecule eectors – cellular events, in spermatogenesis events such as, migration, division, apoptosis and sperm decapacitation using pebp1 over-expression, RNA interference, uorescence in situ hybridization, spermatogonial stem cell transplantation, and knockout technical methods. Finally, we will systematically explain why PEBP1 regulations and mechanisms in spermatogenesis events on the cells in vivo knockout mice levels. The goal of the project is to investigate the eects of environmental factors and epigenetic mechanisms in spermatogenesis, provide molecular targets for clinical diagnosis and treatment of male infertility sperm. It is available for innovative theory and practical application.

Project 27 Comparing Thousands of Big Genomes

With the rapid growth of genomics sequence data, it’s becoming more challenging to compare tens or hundreds of genomes over long or short evolutionary distances. Therefore, new methods demand the improvement of the comparison of many genomes. In this project we are going to develop new methods to compare and visualize many big eukaryotic genomes with various evolutionary distances. Main tasks during the internship will be: 1) Find an existing method to compare a model organism genome to more than 100 other genomes and 2) visualize the comparison results.

Project 28 Computer Aided Drug Design

As drug development faces increasing challenges, computer aided drug design is a vital method in speeding up the discovery rate of new drugs. Therefore, training undergraduate students to master this method can help them to understand the process of drug design and develop new methods. In this project we are going to train the students with 3D-QSAR, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulation and construct a robust prediction model. Main tasks during the internship: 1) Construct a robust drug prediction model for several diseases and 2) Compare with the previous works.

Project 29 Protein-Protein Interaction

Years of exploration and study into cellular, molecular and biochemical biology, structural and biophysical contexts have produced a noteworthy compilation of knowledge on the physiochemical properties and function of individual proteins. Nonetheless, a single protein executing a function alone is very rare and is not often witnessed. The systemic interactions of dierent proteins in dierent biological processes, ranging from normal to disease phenotypes, play a signicant role. The interface interactions of dierent proteins ensure the systemic coordination of cellular processes and may lead to dierent disorders or diseased phenotypes. Many in vitro methods for the investigation of PPI are widely used, such as protein-fragment complementation assay, coimmuno-precipitation, TAP tagging, yeast two-hybrid and X-ray crystallography. Fortunately, the use of in silico protein-protein interaction methods have greatly reduced the costs, time and eorts of wet experimentations. These processes such as structure and sequence-based approaches, in silico two hybrid chromosome vicinity, gene fusion, phylogenetic tree construction and proling, and microarray gene expression-based methodologies were developed. The detailed study of PPIs has accelerated the mapping of functional pathways to illustrate the molecular mechanisms of cellular routes and also to identify new drug targets for the treatment of specic diseases. Therefore, this project will thoroughly investigate the interactome of dierent phenotypes and extract possible information such as: (i) Identication of key nodes in the DEGs interactome that could act as possible drug targets acting as hub node. (ii) Meta-analysis of large PPI networks to discover universal biomarkers; (iii) Understanding the Gene regulatory network; (iv) Identication of protein-protein interface and their MD study to understand the interaction mechanism of two protein; (v) Identify the key transcription factors in the disease phenotype; (vi) Targeting identied drug targets for possible discovery of potential inhibitors.

Project 30 Metabolic Regulation and Engineering of Medicinal Plants

China has a great availability of medicinal plants. Our project mainly focuses on metabolic regulation and the engineering of medicinal plants, such as Artemisia annua and Catharanthus roseus. Among them A. annua has obtained great attention due to the antimalarial agents: artemisin and its derivatives. Malaria is one of the most serious health problems in human history and was responsible for more than 600,000 deaths last year. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are recommended by WHO as the best choice for acute malaria as it has saved millions of lives in Africa. The Chinese pharmacologist Youyou Tu received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her contribution to the artemisinin isolation. Moreover, artemisinin and its derivatives have been found to have antiviral, anticancer, and antischistosomal activities, which makes artemisinin a promising natural multifunctional product. Plants of A. annua are the main commercial source of artemisinin. Unfortunately, the supply is restricted by the low amounts of artemisinin at a range of 0.1%-1 % dry leaf weight of A. annua, which results in a high cost of this eective product that most of the malarial victims in Africa cannot aord. In order to improve the artemisinin content in A. annua by reducing its production cost, our project focuses on metabolic engineering of A. annua plants using three main strategies: overexpressing artemisinin biosynthetic pathway key enzyme genes in A. annua, blocking artemisinin biosynthesis competitive pathway key enzyme genes and transcriptional regulation of artemisinin biosynthesis.

Project 31 Ecological Stoichiometry of Fagaceae Trees and Parasite weevil larvae at Soil Phosphorus-Rich Sites in Subtropical China

Subtropical areas generally have soil P-poor ecosystems due to strong leaching under high temperatures and precipitation. Fortunately, lots of P-rich ores are distributed throughout the Hubei, Hunan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan etc. provinces in China, forming typical soil P-rich ecosystems. This provides an ideal situation for studying the ecological signicance of P-rich soils. In this project, Fagaceae trees and parasite weevil (Curculio davidi) in the P-rich ores and adjacent P-poor areas, in Central Yunnan Plateau, have been selected as the study subjects for investigating ecological stoichiometry of plants and herbivorous insects by metabolomics. Our main objectives are, 1) to show the relationship between stoichiometric traits and the metabole of Fagaceae trees, revealing the strategy of plant adaptation for varying soil nutrients; 2) to study the origins stoichiometric traits of dierent Fagaceae trees and the relation to soil nutrients; and 3) to show the up-cascade transfer of soil P-rich eects along a parasitism food chain, revealing the response of parasite insects to a variation in environmental nutrients. These results have great implications in understanding the ecosystem properties in subtropical areas in the context of global change.

Project 32 Vegetation and Aerosol Fine Particles (PM2.5)

From previously conducted experiments, basic conclusions have been made that explain the connection between leaf properties and its particulate deposition capacities. Meanwhile, the variation of particles deposited by leaves and formed in air was found but its mechanism was not explained. Thus, to dig deeper the relationship between leaves and its mechanisms, the description of the process of particle variation may help in discovering and understanding how plants work as natural air-pollution lters. This project mainly focuses on two subjects. The rst is to nd more properties to help decide which properties play a bigger role in dust deposition. The second is to gure out the process of particle variation chemically and physically. This project aims to lay a systematical foundation for the aerosol particle deposition of plants and the chemical and physical transformation of particles.

Project 33 Viticulture and Enology

The center of Viticulture and Enology will oer the visiting students the opportunity to practice their knowledge and techniques on a number of grapevine-related elds, including the grape germplasm maintenance, molecular breeding, functional gene investigation, grape seedling breeding, vineyard maintenance, winemaking process, analysis of aromatic and nutritional compounds in grape and wine, grape wine sensory analysis and wine culture. From this program, students can become familiar with the whole industrial process from vine to wine and may discover their future career path in the eld.

Project 34 Ecological Restoration and Eco-design of Urban-rural Fringe in Shanghai

Shanghai is not only China’s but also the world’s economic, nancial, shipping and technology center. An urban-rural fringe is a special area formed during the urbanization process and is characterized by a diverse population, mixed types of land use, drastically reduced ecological lands and degradation of the ecological environment, this is what has taken place in Shanghai. This has formed situations where the city is mingled with the countryside, farmland and industrial adjacent to, woodland and the water systems separated and so forth. Utilizing GIS and other spatial analysis techniques to extract and analyze the transformation of land use, establishing the relationship between spatial patterns and ecological processes of urban-rural fringe in Shanghai. Investigation and analysis of environmental pollution, house settlement, farmland and industry, natural condition and ecological level of wetland, forests, green land, water systems, animal and plant biodiversity etc. through the analysis of ecological footprint, carbon footprint, ecological carrying capacity, ecological sensitive areas and other related factors, and the study of techniques on low impact development, river ecological restoration, wetland reconstruction, biodiversity conservation, rural settlement landscape conservation and so forth, ecological restoration design is carried out for the urban-rural fringe in Qingpu district of Shanghai to support for the Shanghai’s ecological development. This project is the one of the key research and development projects of the China National Ministry of Science and Technology in the 13th Five-Year plan.

Project 35 Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation and Applications

It has been discovered that low intensity ultrasound is able to eectively activate or inhibit the neuronal activities in a specic location, which has a great potential in biomedical applications. Nevertheless, there are still lots of technical issues to be solved, including the roles of the parameters of the ultrasound and the mechanisms of the interactions between ultrasound and neurons. This project aims to explore the mechanisms of transcranial ultrasound stimulation and apply it as an innovative neural intervention tool in neurologic diseases, e.g. stroke, depress or Parkinson’s Disease. The students will join a team of graduate students and research faculty members in this project. The laboratory will oer the opportunity for technical training, human and/or animal experimentation and data analysis.

Project 36 Ribosome Specific Protein-protein Interaction Network Construction for Mycobacterium Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is the No.1 most in infectious disease based on the direct and indirect mortality rates. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is the main causative agent of tuberculosis, which has caused 9.6 million newly identied active cases and 1.5 million deaths from the disease in 2014. Moreover, the emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) strains of Mtb has increased the threat that this disease imposes on the public health throughout the globe. For Mtb, ribosome is one of the most important targets for antibiotics development. Although the core structure of bacteria ribosome is similar to that of eukaryote, there are signicant dierences of the overall structure and regulation mechanisms. Consequently, the ribosome of bacteria has been used as a direct target for drug screening. In lieu of the above situation, we will try to reveal the ribosome regulation systematically through global protein-protein interaction discovery. By using bioinformatics analysis and initial validation and function analysis, we aim to identify 1-2 Mtb specic ribosomal protein-protein interactions as potential drug targets. This will be done by: 1) Constructing the rst protein-protein interaction network for all the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) ribosomal proteins. 2) Identifying 1-2 Mtb specic ribosomal protein-protein interaction as potential drug targets.

Project 37 Mechanisms of New Targets in Tumor Metastasis and Development of Therapeutic Methods

Our lab focuses on searching for drug targets which can inhibit tumor metastasis. Prior work has indicated that AEP has a great eect on breast cancer metastasis. Therefore, future work will focus on searching for small molecule inhibitors of AEP, an antitumor prodrug, and therapeutic antibodies. In addition, the work will provide in-depth understanding of the mechanism of the AEP in a tumor microenvironment and tumor-associated macrophage. This project mainly focuses on searching for the inhibitors of Bcl-2 (including natural products and derivatives), setting up appropriate tumor animal models to study ecacy and the molecular mechanisms of microwave hyperthermia chemotherapy and microwave hyperthermia immunotherapy. Through the usage of clinical trials, our research will provide theoretical support for the new tumor therapy.

Project 38 Pain and Treatment

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. Pain is the most common reason for a physician consultation. It is a major symptom in many medical conditions and can signicantly interfere with a person’s general functioning and quality of life. Adequate treatment of pain, chronic pain in particular, remains a challenge for physicians and neurobiologists. In this program, we aim to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying chronic pain including neuropathic pain and cancer pain. In particular, identifying new target molecules and signal transduction pathways. We also aim to study antinociceptive eects of analgesic herbs (and their eective ingredients) and illustrate their mechanisms of action. The specic projects are involved in spinal microglial GLP-1 receptors and IL-10, astroglial D-amino acid oxidase and neuronal glycine receptors.

Project 39 Development and Utilization of Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine

The Fu lab was established in 2006 by professor Lei Fu, a famous scientist in the eld of medicinal and organic chemistry. The research his group does interfaces chemistry and medicine, carrying out research on chemical synthesis and process development/optimization of drugs. These projects are aimed at the Traditional Chinese herbal medicine according to the Chinese Yin-Yang and Five-Element theories to establish a process for the extraction of active ingredients of TCMs. A design will be made to validate a bioassay-based evaluation program, to articulate a TCM recipe/formula and to demonstrate medical applications in the following areas: free radical scavenging, anti-bacterial action, hyper sensitive skin and anti-inammation. This program will provide students the opportunity to learn the fundaments of drug development, identify the compounds in TCM by 1H NMR spectroscopy and HPLC-MS and to nd the active ingredients in TCM.