The Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon Julia Gillard and Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Senator The Hon Chris Evans, presented the 2012 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science on 31 October 2012 in the Great Hall of Parliament House. Winthrop Professor Eric May, deputy director of the Centre for Energy, has been awarded the “The Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year”.

Madam Chen Xiaoya, Vice Minister of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China visited Western Australia as part of her official visit to Australia. Perth was her first stop. Winthrop Professor Dongke Zhang FTSE hosted a dinner meeting for Madam Chen and her delegation, which was also attended by Madam Wang Yiner, the Consul-General of the People’s Republic of China in Perth, on the 22nd of May 2012.

Mingming Zhu, a PhD candidate of Centre for Energy, has won the Student Prize for Best Paper presented at the 2011 Australian Combustion Symposium with the paper titled “Effect of a homogeneous combustion catalyst on the combustion characteristics of single droplets of diesel and biodiesel”, co-authored with a fellow PhD candidate, Yu Ma, and their supervisor, Winthrop Professor Dongke Zhang FTSE. The 2011 Australian Combustion Symposium was hosted at Shoal Bay, NSW by the Discipline of Chemical Engineering and the Priority Research Centre for Energy of The University of Newcastle.

Three major Chinese companies have joined The University of Western Australia and 15 other Chinese and Australian science and industry partners to develop new international collaborative approaches to energy and mining research.

Winthrop Professor Dongke Zhang FTSE, Foundation Professor of UWA Chemical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Energy, has been named in the 2011 Top 100 Australia's Most Influential Engineers.

One of China’s most senior and influential officials has visited The University of Western Australia’s Centre for Energy as part of an Australian visit to promote bilateral relations.

His Excellency Mr Jia Qinglin, Chairman of the National Political Consultation Council of China visited the UWA Centre for Energy on 6 April 2011.

Professor Ji Zhou, President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) attended an informal dinner at W/Prof Dongke Zhang’s home on 14th November 2010 before visiting the UWA Centre for Energy the following day.

The Centre for Energy is holding two workshops for related courses - Introduction to Natural Gas Processing and LNG Production. Lectures will be followed by hands-on simulation examples and problem solving sessions using process flowsheet simulation program.

Introduction to natural gas processing (23-23 November 10)

Associate Professor Xiaolin Wang recently attended the Australia China Young Scientist Exchange Program (YSEP) Showcasing Event at the Australia Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo where he met with other past representatives and this year’s Australia Young Scientists from program.

While at the expo, Xiaolin participated on a panel discussion about the past achievements and the future development of the YSEP program.