Miss Xiaodie OU, a first-year PhD student supervised by Professor Min Wang in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is a winner of the Best Oral Presentation Award at the ACS Fall 2026 – Chicago IL & Digital conference held on August 23 – 27, 2026. The American Chemical Society (ACS) is the world’s largest scientific society by membership (founded in 1876 at New York University, with over 260,000 members worldwide across chemistry, chemical engineering, and related fields), supporting chemical inquiry, education, and professional development. The annual ACS Fall conferences are ACS’s flagship conferences and typically draw between 10,000 and 15,000 attendees (including in-person and digital participants) each year. ACS Fall 2026 featured thousands of technical presentations made by researchers from around the world.

Miss Ou’s presentation in ACS Fall 2026 conference is entitled “3D Printing of Cisplatin-containing New Hydrogel Scaffolds for Postoperative Lung Cancer Treatment”, which is based on her first-year PhD work conducted at HKU. This research has been developing 3D-printable dual-function hydrogel scaffolds for lung tissue regeneration and also for localized cisplatin delivery after lung cancer surgery. The new printing inks comprised silk protein hydrolysate, sodium alginate, and carboxylated cellulose nanofibers. Design of Experiments (DoE) was adopted to guide ink formulation optimization by systematically varying sodium alginate and cellulose nanofiber concentrations at a fixed protein content and by evaluating pore geometry and dimensional accuracy of 3D printed scaffolds and also multilayer printability of newly formulated inks. Rheological, mechanical, morphological, and biocompatibility assessments characterized printing inks and 3D printed hydrogel scaffolds, while cisplatin release and anticancer capability were investigated to establish the platform’s potential for postoperative lung cancer treatment.

The award certificate for Miss Xiaowen Ou