Jigang Zhou (he/him)

About me

I was born/grew up in: My hometown is Da’an (means big peace) China.

I now live in: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

I completed my training/education at: Undergrad & Masters in battery Engineering in Harbin Institute of Technology, in China. PhD at Western University in London, ON with physical chemistry

What I do at work

I am an industry scientist at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). I do scientific research that helps companies create new products. Sometimes the materials they are working with don’t do what they want them to do. When this happens, I can help them figure out what is happening. I do this by figuring out the physical, chemical, mechanical, and microstructural properties of the materials they are using. This is done using a special piece of equipment called a synchrotron. The one I work with takes up about the space of a football field!

The synchrotron produces different kinds of light by sending electrons around a ring at very high speeds. Each type of light is called a beamline. We create 22 different beamlines. Each beamline has a specific purpose and can provide specific information. We analyze how the light interacts with the molecules of a material to learn their properties. When you know the properties of a material you can do a lot with it. For example, knowing the coating on battery materials can help you create a safe battery. Or knowing the molecular structure of a substance can help you make super lightweight but super strong materials.

Outside of research, I engage with other scientists through conferences and publishing battery research results from CLS. I do this so more people will know what we can do. Synchrotron research is very advanced and not many people understand its capabilities. Engagement is the first step. The second part is to figure out what their problem is. From here we will figure out what the best technique we have that will help them. This looks straightforward but we have so many different techniques and they have so many different problems. Sometimes it is not easy to get the best match. Teamwork is very important because no one knows everything!

Before we take on a new project, we must determine a scope of work to be done. Then we confirm what we can do and what outcome they expect. When we know what they want, we can make sure the results we get will be useful to them. This keeps everyone happy! This is a big part of my job. After we do our work at the beamline, we analyze the results. Then we write the report for the client, they pay us for our work, and hopefully come back later with more work for us to do for them.

I am also an adjunct professor at Western University. In that role I supervise a student and conduct collaborative research on batteries.

My career path is

Being a scientist was totally unexpected because my real interest is writing, in Chinese. To become a writer was my dream in middle school. But because at that time, to become a writer didn’t have a future. A smart boy’s best choice was to become an engineer, so I followed that social pressure.

I became an engineer and worked in battery production for 6 years. I realized that research was a better fit for my interest and that to do this I needed a PhD. I looked for a university and people suggested I go to a developed country to get the degree. But this looked impossible because English was always my worst class. But I worked hard, and I passed the English test for Canadian graduate students. Then I went on and got my PhD. Now I realize that my writing skills are very important. Being able to write is a critical skill for a person doing research whether in English or in Chinese.

I am motivated by

Finding unknowns, making discoveries, is what excites me! To solve the most important sustainable society problem is very important to me and that’s what motivates my work. I like communication and, in this job, I get to communicate with a lot of different groups of people. I am very curious about anything that I don’t know. This job has so many chances to identify interesting questions and then use these advanced tools to answer them. It’s like playing hide and seek. And it’s good pay.

How I affect peoples’ lives

Batteries are very important in a sustainable society, but they are not good enough to fulfill their expected role. What I’m doing at CLS contributes to the work of improving batteries. Some of the work we do is kept a secret to respect the intellectual property of our industry partners.

Outside of work I

Writing blogs and social media communication in Chinese to share Canadian life with a Chinese community of people. I've written 174 blogs (200,000 words) with 300,000 views. Another hobby is traveling. I love going to museums to get to know human history. Photography is also a hobby.

My advice to others

Have a dream. Try it. Don't easily give up. Keep an open mind!