Jos CAMPBELL (Research Fellowship)

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia
Exchange to Southeast University, China

Firstly I would like to thank the Endeavour awards team and funding bodies of the Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Research Fellowships for providing me with the opportunity to visit Southeast University in Nanjing. I would also like to thank my host supervisors Prof Ning Gu and Dr Ma Ming for their guidance and looking after me so well while I was visiting.

Before I applied for the Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Research Fellowships, I had little understanding of the magnitude of the experience I was about to undertake. I was fortunate enough to receive the fellowship in 2011 and with support from Prof Gu at Southeast University in Nanjing China, I began one of the most memorable 6 months of my life.

I felt very privileged to work among Prof Gu’s group and see how research is conducted in such I strikingly different culture. The expertise and equipment available at Southeast University were unavailable back at home, so this was a fantastic technical and practical opportunity that without the fellowship, I would have found tremendously difficult to experience. Under their guidance I developed a far better understanding of magnetic nanomaterials, both in their fabrication and application towards hyperthermia based anti-cancer treatments.

During all this, I made some wonderful friends amongst the other students and academics, while the barriers of language and cultural understanding made these experiences all the more rewarding. While I lived in Nanjing, I grew more from an educational and personal perspective than I have in the last 5 years and I would highly recommend such an experience to any student wishing to know more about themselves and their own potential.

China is a very beautiful country and I was lucky enough to get to travel around while I was there. The people are warm and engaging and their society is steeped in a rich cultural history going back thousands of years, which is a stark contrast to Australia. I visited many temples and national parks with the friends I had made, and had an amazing time learning about a country of which I understood so little.

The Fellowships provide a fantastic opportunity for young students to grow and further develop skills that would otherwise be out of reach. Professionally I developed skills and established links with research groups in and around Nanjing, while personally I have come back with a broader perspective on the world and many friends I would never have met.

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