As one of the first crop of graduates from Cuiying Honors College established in 2010, Ms. Lei Guo, a student selected from the School of Chemistry at Lanzhou University, has won a full scholarship for direct admittance into a PhD programme at the University of California, Berkeley.
It is rare for an undergraduate, such as Lei, to get a full scholarship to one of the world’s elite institutions. Of course, this is mostly due to her own efforts and talents, but it is also inextricably linked to the help of her tutors at Cuiying Honors College (CHC). Lei was selected to study in CHC, part of China’s “Top-notch Undergratuate Program” in 2011. She performed among the best in her class academically, receiving two national scholarships, and scholarships for outstanding students from Lanzhou University. In 2012, she received funding from CHC to participate in an inter-university exchange program for one year at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Lei seized this opportunity and, while there, she also participated in a Biochemistry International Summer School at the University of Toronto. During this year abroad, she achieved 10 grades of A or A+, a feat which is not easy even for the local Canadian students.
Ms. Lei Guo received offers to undertake postgraduate research with a full scholarship from UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Minnesota. After careful consideration, she decided to accept the offer from UC Berkeley, whose chemistry graduate school ranked top in 2013 in US News. Lei’s prospective supervisor is Prof. Omar M. Yaghi, one of the outstanding faculty in the Department of Chemistry.
Lei Guo and her supervisor, Prof. Omar Yaghi
Prof. Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, and also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research interests mostly lie in Reticular Chemistry and related areas. He has done great seminar works encompassing the synthesis, and structure-property relationship of new crystalline material, namely metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Prof. Yaghi is listed among the top two most highly cited chemists worldwide.
