Journey from EACH to PhD – by Huian Liu

On November 6, 2020, Huian Liu, an EACH graduate from the first intake successfully defended his PhD thesis “Development of gas chromatography in high pressure condition” at Univeristy of Claud Bernard Lyon 1 under the supervision of Prof. Jérôme Randon.
Below, Huian describes the role of the EACH programme in his achievement:

I did not have a chance to say thank you to EACH program before, but it definitely was a life-changing experience to me. It opened my eyes to a wider horizon of analytical chemistry, which is not only about analytical methods and their instrumentation, there is also chemometrics, metrology and many more. Those knowledges allowed me to be competitive in the field and capable to pursue further success.

In the second year of EACH program in France, I have had the chance to do an internship of 6 months with Prof. J. Randon, on the subject of development of high pressure gas chromatography. With the interest in the continuation and the trust from the professor, I have passed the contest from the doctoral school of Univeristy Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and finally won an entrance ticket to a challenging PhD program.
Life of research is surely complicated. Sometimes you get excited about new ideas, then defeated by the fact that it does not always work, but this is the very reason why this life is vivid. This 3-year journey, neither long nor short, is a precious opportunity to gain expertise, autonomy as well as friendship. As a plus, in the case of EACH students, it also offers a chance to practice a foreign language.
Now I have successfully defended my thesis, the very first person I would like to thank is my supervisor Prof. J. Randon, for his patience on guiding me how research works, for showing me a positive attitude when things do not work out and for spending countless time on helping and correcting my publications as well as thesis writing.
And today, I look forward to future challenges in life.

Congratulations to Dr. Huian Liu and all the best for his future career!