On January 8^th, the State Council of China’s Communist Party Central Committee assembled in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to hold the annual conferral ceremony of the International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award of the People’s Republic of China. Among the 2017 award winners was SCU’s Honorary Professor Philip David Coates, Professor of Polymer Engineering at the University of Bradford, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Famous Overseas Scholar (Chinese Ministry of Education), and first ever recipient of the Tianfu Friendship Award in 2015. The 2017 International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award certificate was presented by China’s Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli. Before the ceremony, President Xi Jinping and other Party leaders met with Coates and other recipients of the award.

Philip David Coates (front left)

Following the award ceremony, Vice Premier Liu Yandong presented Professor Coates with a gold medal, congratulating him and expressing her appreciation for Coates’s efforts toward establishing the Joint International Laboratory for Polymer Micro-processing (Bradford and Sichuan Universities) and his contributions to developing new technologies in polymer processing.

Coates is the first ever Overseas Honorary Professor of Sichuan University to receive the prestigious award, which this year was won by a total of only seven foreign experts based in China or working with Chinese institutions.

About:

The British Professor of Polymer Engineering has earned numerous other awards in the past decade, including the 2007 Yorkshire Forward Innovation Award, the 2008 EU Regio-Stars Award - Centres of Industrial Collaboration, and the 2009 IoM3 Composites Award, among others. In addition to serving as Director of the Joint International Laboratory for Polymer Micro-processing, Professor Coates is also director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Polymer Science & Technology, the AME RKT Centre & Polymer Centre of Industrial Collaboration, and the Science Bridges China program. Coates was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1995. In 2008, he was appointed honorary professor of Sichuan University and, in 2012, Top Overseas SCU Professor. Coates received the Sichuan International Cooperation in Science and Technology Innovation Award in 2016.