28 Mar 2025
Recently, Dr. Peng Zhao, Director, Data Center of the School of Science (SCI) at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) won the “Best Platform Application Award” at the XJTLU Digital Platform Empowerment Competition. This achievement marks SCI’s excellence in digital transformation and innovative application, and demonstrates the strong capabilities of our faculty in leveraging digital technology to enhance academic management and research efficiency.
The competition was designed to encourage all faculty at XJTLU to fully utilize the university’s pioneering no-code platform to develop innovative solutions and practical digital applications, thereby promoting the digitalization process in the fields of teaching, research, and administrative management. SCI successfully attracted widespread attention from judges and participants with their SCI Data Center application developed on the no-code platform, and ultimately claimed the award.
Dr. Peng Zhao, Director of the SCI Data Center, said, “The development and application of the SCI Data Center is a significant step we have taken on the path of digital transformation. Since the end of 2023, we have faced multifaceted challenges in the process of updating the School's website, analyzing the Research Performance Review data, and creating SCI's Annual Research Report, among others. The existing data collection tools were diverse and fragmented, including emails, BOX, Wenjuanxing, offline forms, PURE, intranet forms, Learning Mall, eBridge, etc. The data from these tools were difficult to integrate, leading to low efficiency in data collection, processing and reporting.”
Dr. Zhao continued: “Moreover, the traditional data processing workflow relied on manual operations, which were time-consuming, labor-intensive and frequently, prone to errors. Professor John Moraros, Dean, SCI challenged us to find means and ways to effectively address these key issues. Therefore, we actively participated in workshops on low-code and no-code development platforms starting in May 2024, and received professional training on the no-code platform in October 2024. In November 2024, we began developing the SCI Data Center with significant support from Dr. Xin Bi, XJTLU Chief Officer for Data and Director, Centre for Knowledge and Information, and his expert team and after several months of hard work, we successfully built an efficient and integrated data management platform.”
The structural design of the SCI Data Center fully takes into account the needs of the user, data integration and administrative management. By integrating multiple data sources, the platform has achieved automated data collection, processing, analysis, and reporting, significantly improving work efficiency and data accuracy. In practical applications, the SCI Data Center has successfully supported several important projects. For example, in the statistics and visualization for the newly launched AI+Science PGCert application, the platform provides a real-time visualization dashboard that offers strong decision-making support for course planning and faculty allocation. In the multi-step workflow form for faculty conference fund applications, the platform has realized closed-loop process management, including post-meeting tracking, incentivizing research output, and enhancing transparency and accountability. At the 2025 SCI Postgraduate Symposium and the first XJTLU-UoL-XJTU Postgraduate Research Joint Conference, the platform supported instant marking functions for faculty acting as judges, which can be operated not only on computers but also on mobile phones. It has realized automatic ranking, complete marking lists, reminders for missing judges, and personal task lists, greatly improving the accuracy and efficiency of marking and the convenience of smoothly organizing and running the conference.
The success of the SCI Data Center team would not have been possible without the strong support of colleagues. Many colleagues were involved in this project. Here, we would like to extend special thanks to Prof. John Moraros, Dean, School of Science, who not only provided clear direction and resource support at the beginning of the project but also continuously followed the progress of the project throughout its development process and offered valuable advice and feedback. His vision has been the key to our success, and his encouragement and guidance have given us more confidence and courage to face and overcome difficulties. We would also like to thank Prof. Li Yang (Associate Dean for Research and Impact), Samantha Xu, Yu Ding, Shelia Liu, and other colleagues, as well as Dr. Xin Bi and his team and MITS colleagues Xiangang Hu, Hengyuan Yuan, etc., who provided a lot of technical support. Their hard work and professional capabilities have laid a solid foundation for the success of the SCI Data Center.
Looking to the future, the SCI Data Center has formulated short-term, medium-term, and long-term development plans. In the short term, the SCI Data Center will continue to develop new applications. Currently, 11 form applications are under development, which will be closely aligned with the School’s and XJTLU’s needs and policy directions. In the medium term, the goal is to transform data users into data providers and convert costs into value. In the long term, the SCI Data Center plans to integrate artificial intelligence technology to further enhance the platform’s intelligence level and data analysis and reporting capabilities.
This award is an affirmation of the effectiveness of the SCI Data Center and an encouragement for all faculty and students across the university to actively explore and innovatively step into the path of digital transformation. We believe that in the future, digital construction and its use will be critical in the evolution of the educational landscape and SCI will be there to usher this new era and help XJTLU reach new heights.
Content by Dr Peng Zhao
28 Mar 2025