Graduates | 杨逸凡：“全能少年”修炼记

流年似水，岁月如歌。今年六月，广东以色列理工学院即将迎来首届毕业生。广以2017级本科毕业生系列采访将带大家一同聆听这四年来学生们与广以的故事，共同见证广以学子们的成长。今天分享的是化学工程专业毕业生杨逸凡的故事。

姓名：杨逸凡

毕业高中：广州市协和中学

本科专业：化学工程

进得了实验室，上得了足球场，获得了项目资助，赢得了演讲比赛······杨逸凡便是这样一个“全能少年”，能在神奇的化学实验中大开眼界，能在广泛的兴趣里感受岁月静好，能在丰富的课内外活动中尽情绽放光彩。

化学实验是我的小确幸

“我期待成为一所新学校的拓荒者之一并伴随它成长，我也相信一所新诞生的中外合作大学必将充满机会和挑战。我期待接纳新的有趣的事物，希望能在广以开启一段独特的大学生活。”

选择广以，是杨逸凡探索广阔世界的重要决定。从山西到广州再到汕头，杨逸凡自幼的学习生涯便对国内不同地区的教学风格有所体会。到了大学，开放包容、追求个人成长的他更希望能感受另一个国家传道授业的特色。“我对以色列强调创新和提问的教育理念有所耳闻，而广以的教学严格按照以色列理工学院本部要求来进行，所以教学质量方面我很放心。学生实验室的高配置以及高师生比都足以成为我填报广以的理由。”杨逸凡坚信自己能通过广以取得更大的进步，不负所望，四年的大学生活确实成就了他的蜕变与成长。

入学前，杨逸凡猜测化学工程专业学如其名，少不了复杂的元素反应和现象机理。深入学习后他才发现，在广以，化学工程的核心是“工程”二字。“化学工程的核心理论基础是流体力学、热力学、甚至量子力学等与自然密切关联的学科，通过配合生产的需求，逐渐发展出成熟的工业理论体系，例如化学反应器设计、工艺的设计和过程控制、工业中的诸多单元操作等。”

杨逸凡眼中的化工学科“硬核又灵巧”。在他看来，化工是将工业生产所需的原材料变换为具有商业价值的产品，将生产所需的化学和物理过程由实验室升级至大型生产单位，将升级过程中增加的质量、能量、动量传递等问题加以计算，给出最优的生产设计方案，同时考虑实施成本、风险管理以及环境影响。“化工之‘硬核’在于它是高质量生活水平的必要条件，‘灵巧’在于它的工具可以应用于多种行业，且能够随着理论的发展不断更迭。”杨逸凡如是说。

“有机实验于我而言是一种奖赏。”化工专业众多有趣实用的课程中，杨逸凡最喜欢有机化学实验课。“广以的教学实验室配置很高，每个学生在课上可以独立使用一个通风橱和各种器材。我喜欢动手做东西，很享受独自一人完整地掌控整个实验的感觉。了解实验背景后，我可以一步一步从头开始合成目标物质。反应进行时，我可以观察到许多自己从未见过的现象，即使事先早已通过实验指引得知样品颜色和状态将会产生的变化，但亲自用肉眼见证这一切后依然有十足的新鲜感和趣味感。”

实践出真知。在一节实验课上，杨逸凡曾重复做了三遍实验依然得不到想要的结晶，求助助教后，一把小铁勺让问题迎刃而解，也让他在实践中加深了对知识的理解。“助教在锥形瓶底面挂起一个小铁勺，于是液体变浑浊了，结晶也有了。之所以产生不出结晶，是因为锥形瓶太新太光滑，产物需要一些棱角来成核结晶。这原理我只在书中学过，动手实践过才能记忆深刻。”

科研与兴趣爱好同行

大三的时候，杨逸凡在“环境工程中的生物过程”这门课上参观了Varenyam Achal教授的实验室，经过询问了解，他得知教授目前的研究内容大致是关于用细菌来固定重金属和制造可持续建筑材料。“对我来说，这种和真实生命打交道的研究要远比其他项目更具有吸引力，于是我在大四时联系教授并加入了项目。”

杨逸凡表示，整个项目过程中有很多难忘的事情。“在实验的中后期，我需要在实验室里连续提取土壤中不同种类的含镉物质，包括水溶性的、有机的、碳酸根盐的、土壤残留的等等，实验过程大约需要16个小时。这是最累的一段实验，需要不停重复配制溶液、离心、称重、转移溶液、再称重。实验中还需要用到大量王水，有一定的危险性。所幸的是，实验结果比较理想，我对实际的科研有了初步了解，也学到了不少生物实验的技巧——如何井井有条地设计并操作一个实验，如何通过各式各样的分析仪器从多方面检验实验结果······我认为这对我未来从事学术研究有极大的帮助。” 这个项目，也让杨逸凡及其所在的团队获得2021年广东省攀登计划科研项目资助15000元。

如果说实验和科研是杨逸凡大学生活的主色调，那么丰富的课外活动便是调色盘上缤纷的色彩，共同描绘出其大学生活精彩斑斓的画卷。担任团支部书记，参与策划校园活动；担任学校行政部门的学生助理，负责外教接机、日常生活辅助等事务；兴趣爱好广泛，空闲时与羽毛球、乒乓球、足球和钢琴为伴；创办足球社，撰写推文、设计海报亲力亲为；参加过两次霍特奖的大湾区创业比赛，并在第二次闯进决赛；获得2019年“外研社国才杯全国英语演讲大赛”广东赛区三等奖······杨逸凡说自己“累并快乐着”。“我的生活塞满了各种各样的事情，但我也喜欢这样充实的大学生活。独自思考了许久后茅塞顿开的轻松，看到大家一起策划的活动圆满完成的喜悦，看到创建的社团慢慢步入常态的欣慰，校外比赛有所收获时的成就感······这些都给我带来了极大的满足和动力！在广以的生活或许并不轻松，但一定可以是快乐的。”

千帆过后，苦尽甘来

杨逸凡坦言，大学生活有苦有乐，个中滋味只有自己知晓。他也曾经历过挫败，咬牙度过无数挑灯夜战的时光以勤补拙。杨逸凡打趣地回忆道，人生中第一个通宵竟是为了相对论。“我不是一个很聪明的人，对于不明白的地方往往需要琢磨较长一段时间。如果你能经常在汕大图书馆看到一个对着电脑眉头紧锁的男生，很大可能就是我。有一个晚上，我用尽了一个物理网上作业所有尝试机会后依然没有得到满分，于是带着一点赌气的情绪把对应的内容学了一个通宵。”

“受疫情影响，部分大三课程延至大四才上，于是我和大部分化工专业的同学一起经历了十分辛苦的一个学期。六门主课、两门实验、跟教授做的项目，这些几乎填满了我的日常生活。”杨逸凡认为学习没有捷径可言，“面对学习压力，我并没有什么特殊方法，只是借助压力锻炼了耐心和专注力。我觉得自己或早或晚都会迎接更大的压力，脚步当然不可以就此停下。车到山前必有路，走就是了。”

杨逸凡认为，求学之路能遇到专业又有趣的老师是一件非常幸运的事。“我的老师Moris S. Eisen是一个很机灵的‘老顽童’，平时能和我们玩成一片，但面对我们的学习问题，他总能非常认真严肃地对待。我和队友在参加创业比赛前曾找他讨论参赛的点子。在讨论问题时，他经常用手掌摩挲下巴细细思索。和他的一番讨论除了让我们收获很多建设性的意见，也让我们更加了解目前社会对技术的需求。另一位老师Israel Gutter，他讲课永远高度投入、富有激情。在他的第一节辅导课开始时，他想记录下到中国后第一次执行MATLAB指令，请同学们帮忙录下他按下回车键的视频，留下这个有纪念意义的时刻。我把录下的这份“程序员式的浪漫”发给了他，他也以一贯的热情向我表示感谢。”

杨逸凡擅长生物类的学科，高中时接触到的科研启蒙老师将生物和水环境相结合，让他对学习生态产生了兴趣。“现在我学习了化工的知识，在未来将化工与生态相结合也未尝不可。”因此，在收到瓦赫宁根大学、香港科技大学、香港理工大学、利兹大学发出的录取通知书之后，杨逸凡毅然决定到瓦赫宁根大学攻读环境相关专业硕士研究生。

“广以是一个十分年轻的学校，它能带给学生的不只是舒适的居住环境和无约束的大学生活，更是优质的教学资源和科研资源。” 毕业之际，杨逸凡希望学弟学妹们可以珍惜广以的学习氛围，努力提升自己的学术水平。“课余时间也要尽情发展自己的兴趣爱好，尽情探索课内外新的领域，找到自己学术上的兴趣所在并定下毕业后的目标，脚踏实地徐徐图之。”

广以毕业生的故事

广以学霸初长成

逐梦广以，上限无限

在广以成为更好的自己

青春无限好，奋发正当时

结缘广以，爱我所爱

This June, the first cohort students will graduate from Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. The series of interviews with the graduates from Class 2021 will show their stories with GTIIT in the past four years. Here is the story aboutYang Yifan, a student of Class 2021 from Chemical Engineering Program.

Name: Yang Yifan

High School: Xiehe High School, Guangzhou

Program: Chemical Engineering

As a well-rounded student, Yang Yifan broadens his horizon in the magical chemistry experiments, enjoys his spare time in various hobbies, and gain great achievements in all kinds of competitions. Here are stories about his fantastic university life at GTIIT.

Find my happiness in chemistry experiments

"I'm looking forward to growing up with a new university and I believe that a new Sino-foreign cooperative university will be full of opportunities and challenges. I enjoy learning new and interesting things and starting my wonderful university life at GTIIT." Said Yang Yifan.

Choosing GTIIT is an important decision for Yang Yifan to explore the world. From Shanxi to Guangzhou and then to Shantou, Yang Yifan has experienced the teaching styles of different places in China since he was young. When choosing a university, he preferred to experience the teaching characteristics of another country. "I've heard about that innovation and questioning are attached great importance in Israeli education, and the teaching methods at GTIIT are conducted in strict accordance with the requirements of the Technion, so I'm confident in the teaching quality at GTIIT. I'm also attracted by the amazing world-class laboratories and the high teacher-student ratio in this university." Yang Yifan firmly believes that he can make greater progress after studying at GTIIT and he did.

Before studying at GTIIT, Yang Yifan guessed that Chemical Engineering Program must involve complex elemental reactions, phenomena and mechanisms. After further study, he found that, in GTIIT, the core of this program is engineering. "The core theoretical basis of chemical engineering includesfluid mechanics, thermodynamics, even quantum mechanics and other disciplines closely related to nature. By cooperating with the needs of production, it has gradually developed a mature industrial theoretical system, such as chemical reactor design, process design and control, unit operationsin industry, etc."

In his view, chemical engineering is related to turning the raw material into industrial production with commercial value, upgrading the chemical and physical processes from laboratories to large-scale production units, additionally taking into account thetransfer of mass, energy and momentum during the upgrade process, calculating and giving the optimal production design solution, while considering the implementation cost, risk management and environmental impact. "Chemical engineering is necessary for a high standard of living. Its tools can be applied to a wide range of industries and can be changed with the theory evolves." Yang Yifan said.

"Organic chemistry experiment is a reward for me." Among the many interesting and practical courses in Chemical Engineering Program, Yang Yifan likes organic chemistry laboratory the best. "GTIIT's teaching laboratories are very well equipped. Each student can use a fume hood and various equipment independently in class. I really enjoy being in complete control of an experiment on my own. I can synthesize the target substance step by step from scratch. During the reaction, I could observe many phenomena that I had never seen before. Even though I had already known the changes in the color and state of the sample through the protocol before doing experiments, it was still quite surprising and interesting to witness all this with my eyes."

Yang Yifan had repeated the experiment three times but still could not get the desired crystallization in a lab. After asking the teaching assistant for help, a small iron spoon solved the problem, and also let him deepen the understanding of knowledge in practice. "The teaching assistant attaches a small iron spoon to the bottom of the cone, and the liquid becomes cloudy and crystallizes. Crystallization did not occur before because the erlenmeyer flask was so new and smooth that the product needed some edges to nucleate and crystallize. I only learn this principle in books, and can only memorize it after I do it."

Research and hobby go hand in hand

In his junior year, Yang Yifan visited Prof. Varenyam Achal's lab in the course of "Bioprocesses in Environmental Engineering". He learned that professor's research was about the use of bacteria to fix heavy metals and make sustainable building materials. "For me, this kind of research that deals with real life is far more appealing than other projects, so I contacted the professor and joined the project in my senior year."

There were many unforgettable things in the project. "In the middle and late stages of the experiment, I need to continuously extract different forms of cadmium containing substances in the soil in the lab, including water-soluble, organic bonded, cadmium carbonate, soil residues and so on. The experiment process takes about 16 hours. This was the most tiring part of the experiment, which required repeated preparation of the solution, centrifugation, weighing, transferring the solution, and weighing again. The experiment also needs to use a lot of aqua regia, which is dangerous. Fortunately, the experiment result is ideal, and I also learned a lot of biological experiment skills - how to design and operate an experiment, how to use a variety of analytical instruments to test results...... I think it is of great help for my future academic research." This project also let Yang Yifan and his teammate won 15,000 yuan of funding from the 2021 Guangdong Provincial Climbing Plan Scientific Research Project.

Yang Yifan's university life is colorful with various extracurricular activities. He served as a student assistant in GTIIT's administration department, responsible for international faculty's daily living assistance and other affairs; playing badminton, table tennis, football and piano in his spare time; established GTIIT's football club, wrote publicity articles and designed posters himself; participated in the Hult Prize Greater Bay Area Innovation Challenge twice and entered the final in 2019; won the third prize of "FLTRP ETIC Cup National English Speaking Contest" in Guangdong Province in 2019...

"Tired but happy" as described by Yang Yifan. "My life is full of all kinds of things, but I enjoy such a fulfilling university life. I love the sense of achievement when the activities we planned were held successfully, and when I got good results in the competitions... All these brought me great satisfaction and motivation! Life in GTIIT may not be easy, but it can certainly be happy."

No gains without pains

To Yang Yifan, university life was full of joys and also hardships. He jokingly recalled that the first all-night study in life was for the theory of relativity. "I'm not that smart, and I need to spend a long time pondering over things I don't understand. If you often see a boy frowning at his computer in the library of Shantou University, chances are it's me. There was a night I didn't get full marks after using up all opportunities at a physics online assignment, so I stayed up all night studying the subject."

"Affected by the pandemic situation, some senior courses were postponed to the senior year, so I experienced a very hard semester together with most students of Chemical Engineering Program. Six mandatory courses, two experiments and a research project almost filled my daily life." Yang Yifan believes that there is no shortcut to learning. "I don't have any special way to deal with study pressure. I just use pressure to learn to be patient and dedicated. I think I will meet more pressure sooner or later. Just face it."

It is very lucky for Yang Yifan to meet so many professional and interesting teachers at GTIIT. "My teacher Prof. Moris S.Eisen likes to play with us after class, but he took our study problems very seriously. My teammates and I talked to him about the idea of a start-up competition. Discussing with him not only let us gain a lot of constructive opinions, but also let us better understand the current society's demand for technology. Another teacher, Prof. Israel Gutter, is always highly engaged and passionate in his lectures. At the beginning of his first tutorialclass, he wanted to record the first execution of the MATLAB command in China. He asked us to help record the video of him pressing the enter key to leave this memorable moment. I sent him this kind of 'programmer romance' and he thanked me with great enthusiasm."

Yang Yifan is good at biology. When he was in high school, he was influenced by a science teacher who combined biology with water environment, which aroused his interest in studying ecology. "Now that I have learned about chemical engineering, it is possible to combine chemical engineering with ecology in the future." Therefore, after receiving offers from Wageningen University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Leeds, Yang Yifan decided to pursue a master's degree in environmental related programs at Wageningen University.

"GTIIT is a very young university. It can bring students not only a comfortable living environment and colorful university life, but also high-quality teaching and research resources." Yang Yifan hopes that juniors can cherish the learning atmosphere and strive to improve their academic performance. "Develop your own interests, explore new fields inside and outside class and set your goals, and gradually work towards them."

Morestories about GTIITClass 2021graduates

广以学霸初长成

逐梦广以，上限无限

在广以成为更好的自己

青春无限好，奋发正当时

结缘广以，爱我所爱

文：GTIIT传媒与公共事务部

图：杨逸凡、GTIIT传媒与公共事务部

Text:GTIIT News & Public Affairs

Photos: Yang Yifan, GTIIT News & Public Affairs