Recently, the China Criminal Law Society held an award ceremony in Zhengzhou for winners of the National Excellent PhD Thesis of Criminal Law Award as well as their supervisors. Mr. Jiao Yanpeng, University of Macau’s (UM) first doctor of law, who is currently an associate professor of the Kenneth Wang School of Law, Soochow University, won the prize for his PhD thesis entitled, “A Study on Basic Theory of Ecological Legal Interest in Criminal Law”. Dr. Jiao’s supervisor is Prof. Zhao Guoqiang from UM’s Faculty of Law.

The National Excellent PhD Thesis of Criminal Law Award, sponsored by the Gao Mingxuan Criminal Law Foundation and organized by the China Criminal Law Society, is a national award to reward outstanding theses in law. The committee consists of eleven well-known scholars in the field, which ensures the prize is representative and authoritative. All candidate papers undergo an initial evaluation and a second review. This year only eighteen papers from thirteen institutes received this prize.

Dr. Jiao passed his thesis defense with excellence in February 2011 and graduated in March, becoming UM’s first doctor of law since the university launched the PhD programme in law. Now Dr. Jiao is an associate professor and master’s supervisor at Soochow University, as well as the director of the university’s legal specialists training and research centre. His PhD thesis, “A Study on Basic Theory of Ecological Legal Interest in Criminal Law”, is considered by the China Criminal Law Society to be pioneering, groundbreaking and innovative. The China Environmental Law Society rates the thesis as “a major innovation in basic theoretical research in environmental law”.