On September 1, we received 200 mg of lunar soil samples returned by China's Chang'e-6 mission. We are excited about the uncovered secrets from the far side of the moon, which we might be able to decode from the precious samples. 

From left to right: Liu Yang, Jiaxin She, Zhongya Hu, Weiqiang Li, Samuele Boschi, Jun Mu, Xianglong Luo, Haokun Lian

Prof. Birger Schmitz from Lund University of Sweden visited our school and gave an presentation entitled "The largest collision in late solar system history and its effects on climate and life on Earth: The breakup of the L - chondrite asteroid 470 Myr ago"

On August 12, 2023. Jiaxin She defended his PhD thesis on Sn isotope geochemistry. In the same morning, Jiaxin's classmate Tianhua Wang passed another PhD defence. Tianhua Wang's PhD thesis is on theoretical calculation of Sn speciation and Sn isotope fractionation. 

Four group members (Weiqiang Li, Shichao An, Zhiguang Xia, Sam Boschi) attended the Goldschmidt Conference held in Lyon France in early July. It has been four years since we attended this conference last time

Zhongya Hu, Weiqiang Li, Zhiguang Xia

The closing ceremony, students receiving their certificates for successful completion of the five-day summer school

Prof. Gangjian Wei gave the  closing speech for the completion of the summer school

Q&A between the lecturer and audience

Prof. Xiankun Zhu gave the opening speech and the first lecture on history of the Non-traditional Stable Isotope Geochemistry

After 7 years of hard work, Chuan Liu had erned his PhD, and graduated from Nanjing University. He will start a Boya Postdoctral Fellowship in Peking University. Best wishes for him!

From left to right, Zhongya Hu, Weiqiang Li, Zhiguang Xia, photo taken by Haoran Xu

We were successful in aquiring a tiny piece of lunar rock fragment (17.6 mg) returned from China's Chang'e-5 mission. We will perform high precision isotope analysis of K, Mg, and Fe on this sample. Everyone is excited and proud for the achievement of our lab and our country. 

On November 1, 2021, we held a Symposium on the topic of "High Precision K isotope analysis and applications" in meeting room 205 of Xianlin Campus. In this symposium, we invited Prof. Guilin Han from China University of Geosciences, Beijing, Dr. Haiyag Liu from Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Drs. Haiou Gu and He Sun from Heifei University of Technology to attended the symposium. The invited speakers and Prof. Weiqiang Li gave four talks on the latest developement of K isotope geochemistry.

First row from left to right: Weihao Yan, Zhiguang Xia, Jiayang Chen, Zhihan Ji, Qingyu Huang; Second row from left to right: Yuqi Li, Chuan Liu, Haoran Xu, Xianglong Luo, Weiqiang Li, Zhongya Hu, Xuelei Chu, Jun Mu

The year of 2020 was a difficult year for our lab, installation of the Nu1700 Sapphire MC-ICP-MS in January 2020 was terminated early due to the outbreak of the pandemic and the instrument was not really functioning as we expected. We were not able to produce isotope data even we tried very hard on it. At the beginning of 2021, the Nu Instruments company arranged a Chinese engineer, Mr. Zhanling Fan, to visit our lab and fix the instrument with the remote help from British engineers in UK factory. Now the collision cell is installed and begins to function. Additionally, a refurbished New Wave 213nm laser ablation system has arrived to our lab. 

Finally, the influence of COVID-19 is over in China and we can go out and do some field work. A group of three professors (Tianyu Chen, Tao Yang, and Weiqiang Li) and six students (in photo) went to Yichang between October 6 and October 10. We took samples from a Cryogenian-Ediacaran section that was newly exposed by road cut. It was great experience to knock rocks while the three gorges dam was within our sight!

James Ash and Jon Stokes, the installation engineers from Nu Instruments, came and installed the mass spectrometer! They finished the installation earlier than the plan and went back to UK due to the outbreak of Coronavirus in China. ​

In mid November of 2019, Weiqiang Li and Changzhi Wu led a field trip with students and visitor Dr. Max Lechte to Sanjiang County of Guanxi province and Tongdao County of Hunan province, to see the Fulu iron formation.

In mid May of 2019, Weiqiang Li and Changzhi Wu led a field trip with students and postdocs to the salt lakes in Qaidam basin, Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau.

In early December 2018, Weiqiang Li went to the Nu Instruments factory to inspect and test the performance of the collision cell Nu1700 MC-ICP-MS. The instrument is going to be delivered to Nanjing University in early 2019.

In November 2018, Weiqiang Li, Shugao Zhao, and Jun Mu went to Xinyu to investigate the newly discovered wollastonite deposit, which has the largest wollastonite reserve in the world. With the help of Hongbin Li from 912 Geological Prospecting Company, they sampled a drill core that bored through the ore body.

In August, with the installation of the iXRF micro x-ray fluorescent spectrometer, the lab gained the capability to perform in situ analysis as well as elemental mapping.of geological samples

After three years of study and research, Xiaomin Wang successfully graduated with a Master's degree from Nanjing University

This fieldwork in Israel is a part of the collaborative project between Weiqiang Li from Nanjing University and Nicolas Waldmann from University of Haifa.

0n January 5, 2018. Weiqiang Li visited Dr. Kideok Kwon's lab for collaboration on K isotope fractionation factor calculation and gave a seminar on banded iron formation to the department.

0n December, 2017. Weiqiang Li gave an plenary talk on banded iron formation at the 8th Congress of Economic Geology and Mineral Exploration of China.

From left to right: Hui Ye, Shugao Zhao, Chuan Liu, Kang Shuai, Zhongya Hu, Weiqiang Li, Xiaomin Wang

Weiqiang Li and Changzhi Wu and their students Hui Ye and Shugao Zhao are sampling drill cores for the Archean Yudongzi Banded iron formation.

Dr. Weiqiang Li made an oral presentation on K isotope study of porphyry Cu deposit at the Goldschmidt Conference in Paris on August 13, 2017

In April 2017, Zhongya Hu presented his research on Mg isotope resetting between dolomite and calcite during burial metamorphism at AAPG meeting

On March 8, 2017, an ICP-OES was installed. This spectrometer is made by a Chinese company and is capable to collect the whole optical emission spectrum in a single exposure, which allows fast determination of about 70 elements in solutions at the ppm-thousand ppm range.

On September 1, we received 200 mg lunar soils returned by China's Chang'e-6 mission for research. We are very excited about the uncovered secrets from the moon's farside. We will be collaborating with Prof. Yongbo Peng on the research of these samples.