Professor and doctoral supervisor Bai Zhenxu from Hebei University of Technology has been building mutual success partnerships with his students.

Recently, Professor Bai Zhenxu (leftmost) from Hebei University of Technology conducted experiments with his students. Photo provided by interviewee.

The Fifth National University Teachers' Teaching Innovation Competition recently concluded. The "Laser Principles" course taught by Professor and doctoral supervisor Bai Zhenxu from Hebei University of Technology won first prize in the industry-education integration track for local universities.

Different from traditional teaching methods, this course introduces real enterprise cases into teaching while inviting enterprise project leaders to bring R&D problems to the classroom. Students discuss together in class, forming a stable and efficient industry-education integration collaborative mechanism.

After one class, enterprises find answers to their problems, and students learn about the latest cutting-edge knowledge in current industries. Moreover, some students, inspired by classroom learning, participate in national innovation and entrepreneurship competitions and win national-level awards.

"The course brings real enterprise and research scenarios into the classroom, simplifying complex knowledge points through demonstration experiments, reducing the difficulty of understanding theoretical knowledge while refining scientific problems and expanding frontier dynamics," said Bai Zhenxu. This approach better mobilizes students' subjective initiative and solves problems such as difficulty in knowledge-practice integration experience, high-level practical innovation challenges, and collaborative education training difficulties in teaching.

Currently, multiple undergraduate, master's, and doctoral courses taught by Bai Zhenxu, including "Laser Principles" and "Solid-State Laser Engineering," have been selected as provincial first-class courses. He has successively led six provincial and ministerial-level teaching reform projects and, as the first contributor, won first prize in the National University Hybrid Teaching Design Innovation Competition and multiple national and provincial teaching awards.

This year marks Bai Zhenxu's seventh year as a teacher. After graduating with a PhD from Harbin Institute of Technology at the end of 2018, Bai Zhenxu joined Hebei University of Technology. He currently serves as Associate Dean of the School of Electronic Information Engineering, Deputy Director of Hebei Province Advanced Laser Technology and Equipment Key Laboratory, and Director of the Diamond Laser Technology and Application Collaborative Innovation Center.

These achievements are inseparable from Bai Zhenxu's day-by-day research accumulation.

Focusing on the nation's major demands for high-power laser technology in national defense, aerospace information, and frontier science fields, Bai Zhenxu leads multiple research projects including National Key R&D Programs and National Natural Science Foundation projects.

Through team efforts, diamond laser technology research has been pushed to new heights—achieving the highest power for free-space Brillouin lasers, first demonstrating noise suppression characteristics of diamond Raman lasers, and first obtaining direct radiation of diamond vortex light. Multiple achievements have appeared on international journal covers and been selected as Essential Science Indicators (ESI) hot and highly cited papers.

At 11 AM on September 18, after finishing university teaching, Bai Zhenxu rushed to Zhengzhou, Henan, to participate in the 2025 Diamond Industry Conference. Bai Zhenxu attends such academic conferences whenever time permits, hoping to gain inspiration from academic exchanges to help his research.

"Although this conference only covers part of diamond laser technology research fields, I can see the latest frontier technologies, meet experts from different fields, and integrate the latest research results into teaching," said Bai Zhenxu.

His classroom is always full of the latest cases and inspiring questions, guiding students to think about "why" rather than just understanding "what."

What makes students even more delighted is that Bai Zhenxu often invites experts from related fields and front-line engineers from enterprises to the classroom to answer their questions. "When Teacher Bai sees difficult problems we're discussing, he always finds ways to invite experts to lecture for us," said An Jiashuo, a doctoral student at the School of Electronic Information Engineering, Hebei University of Technology.

Bai Zhenxu also led the joint effort with multiple leading industry enterprises to build Hebei University of Technology's first micro-major—"Intelligent Laser Equipment."

In April this year, the "Intelligent Laser Equipment" micro-major was officially launched. Through flexible curriculum design and interdisciplinary integration, it adapts to modern society's demand for diversified and specialized talents. The first batch of 37 undergraduate students from different schools gathered together for exploratory learning.

As Associate Dean of Teaching, Bai Zhenxu actively promoted the application for the "Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering" undergraduate major and successfully obtained approval, improving Hebei University of Technology's electronic information direction professional system and further optimizing the talent cultivation structure.

Writing recommendation letters for students, conducting research together with students... For master's and doctoral graduate students, he is a navigator fighting alongside them, leading them to surf at the international academic frontier; for undergraduate students, he is a patient enlightener, making complex professional knowledge vivid and interesting, planting seeds of science in their hearts.