By Rosalind Pulley
Dr Smith was an oral history project assistant at the Museum of Chinese Australian History in 2009-2010.
Australian researcher and environmental engineer Kate Smith, 33, beat thousands of Chinese and international students to claim the Tsinghua Top Grade Scholarship after completing her Doctor of Philosophy, Environmental Science and Engineering in Beijing.
(Photo: Taken at Tsinghua University on the day she graduated with Doctor of Philosophy, Environmental Science and Engineering. Supplied: Kate Smith)
The award recognised her outstanding research, academic publications and community service in China, where she volunteered with migrant families, disabled children and helped improve arsenic-contaminated water supplies in remote villages.
Accomplished in five languages and the author of two books, one in Chinese, Dr Smith recently graduated from Tsinghua University with 8000 other PhD and Masters graduates, watched by family who flew in from Australia and New Zealand for the occasion.
Dr Smith’s research on urban water sustainability in China has already earned her other international awards and has just been published by the International Water Association (IWA). It also led to her team having input into the design of a water system near Beijing.
Dr Smith attended Caravonica State School and Trinity Anglican School in Cairns before graduating with Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science degrees and a Diploma in Modern Languages from Melbourne University.
In 2013, she won a $150,000 John Monash Scholarship to study overseas and became the first Monash Scholar to study in China. While there, she was awarded Tsinghua University’s Outstanding Masters Thesis, won Best Presentation at the IWA Young Water Professionals Conference in Taipei, won the Veolia Trophées Performance Award in France and the BHP Australia-China Scholarship.
Professor Shuming Liu from Tsinghua’s School of Environment said the Top Grade Scholarship at Tsinghua was the most difficult to attain at the university and the most prized.
“It is the biggest one for students. We have over 10,000 postgraduate students in the university and each year only 10 students get that award.”
Professor Liu said he was stunned when the blonde Australian wrote “the longest email I have ever received in Chinese” asking him to supervise her research.
“That really shocked me because … I thought this is a Chinese person who wanted to be my student and at the end I saw the name.”
(Photo: Dr Kate Smith receiving the Tsinghua Top Grade Scholarship from Tsinghua University Council vice chairman Professor Botao Xiang. Supplied: Kate Smith)
Later, he challenged her to aim for the Tsinghua Top Grade Scholarship. “I said ‘OK, this is your target’. I remember this very clearly.”
Professor Liu said she had become an ambassador for the university and a “symbol of international students”.
He said she was Tsinghua’s “most famous overseas student”, featuring on Chinese national television channel CCTV and in the China Daily newspaper.
In July, she was invited to a gathering of 600 young international scientists and 39 Nobel Laureates in Germany.
After eight years in China, Dr Smith recently returned to Australia, where she is working as a water engineer with global consultant Aurecon on major projects for Sydney Water, Australia’s largest water utility.
(Photo: Taken at Tsinghua University with family from Australia and New Zealand, who flew in for the graduation in Beijing. Supplied: Kate Smith)