PhD triumph for family
University of Queensland graduand Dr Jian Bang Peng says his doctorate is just as much for his four brothers as himself as they never got the chance to attain a PhD.
Dr Peng, 64, will graduate with his PhD at a ceremony in the University's Mayne Hall on Thursday, May 27, at 6pm.
A research officer in the University of Queensland's Chemistry Department, Dr Peng has three brothers and two sisters in China and his second-eldest brother in the United States. "My brothers dreamt of being able to achieve a higher degree such as a PhD. My achievement is for them as well," Dr Peng said.
"Before the Cultural Revolution, it was impossible for us to achieve a PhD. Two of my three brothers (a senior mechanical engineer and a professor of geology) in China are too old to embark on the degree now and for a variety of political reasons, my other brother wasn't even allowed to complete an undergraduate degree and is now a factory worker."
His positive and congenial manner belies a past life in China he describes as "miserable" including a year's hard labour in the fields during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 and six years of forced separation from his wife Yiming and their daughter Annie. After completing his bachelor of science at the University of Science and Technology of China, he was employed as a teaching assistant in their Department of Polymer Science until 1966. In 1966, he became an engineer at the Shandung Institute of Plastics until 1971 when he was exiled to plant cotton in outlying country areas as part of his "re-education". His wife and child were re-located 1000kms away.
In 1973, he became a senior lecturer at USTC in Heifei. Eleven years later, he was able to leave China for the first time to become a visiting scholar at Northwestern University in the United States. Thanks to the efforts of the late Professor Jim O'Donnell and current Associate Professor Geoff Barnes of the Chemistry Department, Dr Peng joined the University of Queensland as research officer in 1988. However, his new life was hardly complete with him enduring six years of separation form his wife and daughter until the Chinese Government allowed them to join him in Brisbane in 1990. Despite his life experiences, he is not a bitter man, expressing great hope for the China's future under new leaders such as Premier Zhu.
"The leadership has changed with time for the better. The current Premier had a harder time than I did during the Cultural Revolution and was regarded as a political prisoner. His suffering under Chairman Mao makes it easy for him to understand how many Chinese hate this period in our history," Dr Peng said.
His forward-thinking is reflected in the nature of his PhD on thin solid films for use in the microcomputer and microelectronics industries of the future.
For more information, contact Dr Jian Bang Peng (telephone 07 3365 4257 at work or 07 3278 8089 at home), Dr Geoff Barnes (telephone 07 3365 3511) or Professor John Cotton (telephone 07 3365 3837).
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