Recently, the Australian Research Council (ARC) has released the first round of ARC Linkage projects for 2020. The project “Low-density High-performance Proppants for Hydraulic Fracturing Process”, jointly submitted by research team led by Professor Zhaozhong Yang and a team of Australian experts, is listed among them.

National Natural Science Foundation of China has signed a collaboration agreement with ARC, and the latter funds research and researchers under the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP). The ARC Linkage Project aims to foster collaborative research in both academia and industry. It is reported that there were 180 applications in the first round, and 61 projects were approved with the approval rate of 33.8%.