On January 8^th, 2018, the State Science and Technology Award of 2017 was held in the great hall of the people of Beijing by The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and The State Council. The research team led by Professor Zhang Qiuyu, from the School of Natural and Applied Sciences of Northwestern Polytechnical University(NPU), won the 2^nd Award on State Science and Technology of 2017 for The key technologies of structure regulation and industrial application of polymer materials for adsorption and separation.

The project from Professor Zhang Qiuyu’s team, The key technologies of structure regulation and industrial application of polymer materials for adsorption and separation, is a major breakthrough in the development and application of new functional polymer materials in China, and the overall technology is at the world’s leading level.

The project aims at extracting gallium efficiently, solving the problem from enzymatic cephalosporin intermediates production such as low separation efficiency, unstable performance and backward application. Under the support of national projects 973 and 863, the research study broke the restriction of structure regulation of material performance improvement through 10 common key technologies. The project also established the integrated application of new materials, technology and complete sets of equipment of separation technology system, and built 140 tons per year of gallium extraction device which made the output of gallium increased 6 times in China. Most importantly, it broke the foreign monopoly situation of cephalosporin synthesis with adsorption separation and load material, and built a production line of 2000 tons of 7-ACA enzymatic method, which realized the upgrading of cephalosporin industry.

The project which has both advanced and practical features, met major national requirements, oriented accurate topics, and has outstanding technical innovation, significantly improves the technical level of adsorption separation of material in our country and international competitiveness of the industry. It is the landmark change that the project achieves from the traditional chemical method to the low pollution and low material consumptions of enzymatic. It also makes the gallium resource extraction reached a leapfrog development in our country.

The project has won 1^st Award on Provincial Science and Technology, two terms of 2^nd Award, 30 patents of Authorized Invention, 3 patents of Utility Model, 9 standards and 80 related papers. It has been widely used in beverage depth purification, chemical purification and isotope separation, which shows a wide application prospect and important promotion value.

The 2017 State Science and Technology awards were awarded to two top science and technology researchers, 271 achievements and seven foreign technology experts. Among them, there are 35 national natural science awards, 66 national technological invention awards and 170 national science and technology progress awards. Wang Zeshan and Hou Yunde won the national top science and technology award.

In 2017, it is reported that experts from Northwestern Polytechnical University ( NPU) won 4 terms of 1^st award and 8 terms of 2^nd award of the National Defense Science and Technology awards, 6 terms of 1^st award and 5 terms of 2^nd award of Shaanxi province science and technology, 1 term of 1^st and 2terms of 2^nd award of the excellent achievement in scientific research of colleges and universities, 1term of 1^st award and 1 term of 2^nd award of the military science and technology award of the frontier innovation special prize.

(Wu Wenning, Zhang Baoliang)