J.Craig Venter

Top-level genome research scientist of the twenty-first century, Academician of American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences

Dr. Venter is the scientist whose research papers are most cited. He has published over 280 research papers. He has won many honorary degrees and scientific awards, including National Medal of Science 2008, Gairdner Foundation International Award 2002, Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2002, King Faisal International Prize, and etc.

Saijuan Chen

Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Academician of Academy of Sciences for the Developing World

Academician Chen currently is the director of State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics of Shanghai JiaoTong University, the director of Shanghai Institute of Hematology Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to the Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, and the director of National Research Center for Translational Medicine (Shanghai).

Academician Chen makes a long-term commitment to research on the mechanisms and therapies of malignant hematologic diseases. She has taken the lead in proposing and implementing Leukemia Genome Anatomy Project, identified serial mutation genes and fusion genes associated with pathogenesis of leukemia, and discovered new pathogenic mechanisms of leukemia, which offers new biomarkers and targets for the clinical diagnosis, prognosis evaluation and targeted therapy of leukemia. She also has established the molecular typing system for acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) prognosis, thus further improving and enriching the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis of leukemia to provide theoretical basis for developing molecular targeted therapy strategy. By studying the two AML subtypes, acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) and AML-M2b, and the chronic myeloid leukemia blast crisis, Prof. Chen has successfully developed novel synergic targeted therapy for APL and then further applied such strategy to treatment of other types of leukemia.

Yuankai Shi

Vice president of Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences

Prof. Shi currently serves as the vice director of National Cancer Center, the vice director of National Clinical Research Center of Medicine (Anti-Tumor), the director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Clinical Study on Anticancer Molecular Targeted Drugs, chief physician, PhD supervisor. He also is the vice president of Asia Clinical Oncology Society, the Chairman of Tumor Clinical Chemotherapy Committee of Chinese Anti-Cancer Association, the Chairman of Anti-Tumor Medicine Committee of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, and the Chairman of Oncologist Branch of Chinese Medical Doctor Association.

Prof. Shi has been long engaged in medical therapy for malignant tumors and has gained rich clinical experience in medical therapy for lymphoma, lung cancer, digestive cancer, breast cancer, and tumors of male urogenital system. He also has made great achievements in autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, clinical trials of novel antitumor drugs and its related translational research.

Ning Gao

Principal investigator, PhD supervisor, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University Winning Project: research on the structural and molecular mechanisms of regulation of protein translation

Member of the Ninth Cryo-Electron Microscope Committee of Chinese Association of Electron Microscope, member of the Ultrastructure Micrography Committee of the Biophysical Society of China, commissioner of the Single Molecule Biology Branch of the Biophysical Society of China.

Dr. Gao got his PhD degree at State University of New York from the Laboratory of Prof. Joachim Frank, the founder of Cryo-Electron Microscopy. He has been engaged in the research of structural biology using cryo-electron microscopy since 2002. As one of excellent youth talents in this field, Dr. Gao has made several important scientific breakthroughs in recent five years and has published more than 20 research papers in Nature, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, PloS Biol, PNAS, eLife, Nucleic Acids Research, and etc. as corresponding author. His research focuses on the significant problems in life sciences. He has made systematic and original contributions to the fields of ribosome biosynthesis and protein translation regulation by revealing the different mechanisms of protein synthesis and growth regulation in pathogenic bacteria and yeasts from those in host cells.

Min Huang

Principal investigator, PhD supervisor, Shanghai Institute of Material Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences Winning project: research on mechanism of HDAC inhibitor managing solid tumor resistance and drug combination strategy

Dr. Huang is one of the first awardees of ‘National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars’ of NSFC, the first awardees of ‘Outstanding Young Scientists’ of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the awardees of ‘Shanghai Pujiang Program’; as the principal investigator, Dr. Huang takes on the Significant New Drugs Development Project of MOST, the Scientific and Technological Cooperation Program for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the Surface Project of NSFC; as a key scientist, Dr. Huang engaged in National Major Programs of China; the youth editorial board member of Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica.

Dr. Huang’s research interest is the development of novel molecular targeted anti-tumor drugs and classic therapeutic targets. She is also interested in tumor metabolism, an internationally emerging field. She also carries out research on susceptible population and antitumor drug resistance by dealing with bottleneck problem of clinical efficacy of antitumor drugs. In recent five years, Dr. Huang has published 9 research articles in Cancer Cell, Cancer Res, Oncogene, and etc. as co-corresponding author and an invited review article in Trend Pharmacol Sci.

Wei Li

Principal investigator, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Winning project: research on haploid embryonic stem cells in mammals

Dr. Li has made a series of breakthroughs in research field of haploid embryonic stem cells in mammals, including establishment of several novel types of mammalian haploid embryonic stem cells and development of haploid embryonic stem cell technology and its application in genetic engineering of mammals and basic research of reproduction and development. Such achievements offer new tools and theories for cutting-edge research in biology and have been reported in Nature in 2012 and Cell Stem Cell in 2014 respectively, which are highly valued at home and abroad. Among them, the research of preparation of genetically modified animals using mouse haploid embryonic stem cells was awarded ‘Top 10 Science Advances’ in China.

Yi Shi

Principal investigator, PhD supervisor, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Winning project: mechanistic research on interspecies transmission of novel and newly emerging viruses including influenza and Ebola viruses

Dr. Shi is the principal investigator of Research Group of Pathogenic Infection Regulation and Immunological Recognition, CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology. He is a newly emerging excellent young scientist in the field of pathogenic infection, and has won the awards of ‘National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars’ of NSFC, the ‘Outstanding Young Scientists of CAS’, and LU JIAXI Award for Junior Scientists of CAS.

Dr. Shi is interested in the research of pathogenic infection regulation and immunological recognition. He studies the scientific problems of how pathogenic microorganisms cross-species-infect host cells using structural biology and cell biology technology to discover the mechanism of infection, replication and assembly of pathogenic microorganisms in host cells as well as the mechanism of regulation of pathogenic infection by host factors, which provide foundations for anti-infective drug development. Dr. Shi has published over 50 SCI papers in international academic journals.

Jiqiu Wang

Attending physician, Department of Endocrinology, Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to the Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, PI of Research Group of Obesity Winning Project: pathogenic mechanism of obesity

M.D., PhD supervisor, awardee of National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars of NSFC

Dr. Wang has fully addressed the roles of leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled receptor 4 (LGR4) in the pathogenesis of obesity, hypertension and disorders of lipid metabolism and the underlying mechanisms in the past decade. Dr. Wang Lab has gradually established the full research platform for obesity and metabolism disorder and developed several mouse models of gene modification, Nematode models for gene slicing, key platform for energy metabolism analysis and research technology for pivotal appetite, thus developing the obesity translational research strategy of “clinical cohort → genetic analysis → function and mechanism research” and made several important academic achievements and published many high-level SCI papers. He has won several national and provincial grants, facilitating the multi-disciplinary development.

Xiujie Wang

Principal investigator, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Winning project: multi-angular analysis of mechanism of stem cell pluripotency determination at RNA level

Dr. Wang is one of outstanding young bioinformatics scientists in China. She focuses on the systematic discovery of non-coding RNA in eukaryotes and function research. Dr. Wang for the first time has revealed the presence of microRNA in unicellular organism Chlamydomonas, and adenovirus HSV-1, which is propagandized by Nature and other academic journals; she has identified miRNAs causing heart failure and the underlying mechanism, which is highlighted by Circulation Research; she has developed many bioinformatics software including GOEAST、psRobot、ISRNA, which are widely used by researchers. Specially, GOEAST a gene enrichment analysis software, has been cited for 305 times since its first publication in 2008, and chosen as the teaching demonstration software by NIH.

Jian Xu

Principal investigator, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Winning project: microbiome-based oral health warning: scientific foundation and technology platform

Dr. Xu is the founding member of editorial board of mSystems, one of important journals in microbiome, and the member of International Cooperation Committee of Chinese Society for Microbiology. He was the leader of Sequence Assembly and Analysis Group at Genome Institute of Washington University from 2002 to 2008, and undertook the first 200 human intestinal symbiotic bacteria genome projects initiated by US National Science Foundation. In 2008, he was enlisted by CAS Hundred-Talent Program and then joined full time in Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-QIBEBT) both as the leader of functional genomics group and the director of Biosource Center; he has been the founding director of Single-Cell Center from 2013 and also the director of academic board of CAS-QIBEBT. He focuses on the development of precise diagnosis and caring technology based on human symbiotic bacteria and microalgae biosynthesis technologies, and the discovery of microbiome functions and evolutionary mechanism by developing and applying novel microbiological analytical technologies including single cell Raman spectroscopy for cell sorting and imaging, Ramanome/Meta-Ramanome, and etc.

Yanhui Xu

Principal investigator, PhD supervisor, Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, both the member and commissioner of the Biophysical Society of China Winning project: structural basis for the dynamic regulation of DNA methylation

Dr. Xu currently serves as the principal investigator of the National Key Project of Research and Development Plan (Protein Machine and Life Process Regulation). Dr. Xu was awarded the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, Exceptional Young Talent Award of Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, Yangtze River Scholars Distinguished Professor, first Science and Technology Award for Chinese Youth, Tan Jiazhen Life Sciences Innovation Award, and etc. Dr. Xu has authored over 20 research papers in Nature, Cell and other journals as corresponding author and these research outcomes are highly valued at home and abroad. Dr. Xu has been long engaged in structural biology research of epigenetic regulation, and systematically addressed the molecular mechanisms of catalysis, substrate recognition and regulation of enzymatic activities of proteins involved in epigenetic regulation, thus driving the deep understanding of mechanisms underlying epigenetic regulation from the point of view of structural biology.

Nieng Yan

Professor, PhD supervisor, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University Winning project: research on the structural biology and molecular mechanism of muscle excitation-contraction coupling

Prof. Yan joined in the School of Medicine Tsinghua University in 2007. The Yan Lab focuses on the research of structure and functional mechanism of important membrane proteins. She has been undertaken and participated in several programs of NSFC and 2 Major Research Programs of MOST of China, and has hosted one 973 program. During the period, Prof. Yan has published 43 academic papers, among which 16 papers are in Cell, Nature and Science as corresponding authors. These original scientific outcomes reach international advanced level and greatly promote the rapid development of structural biology of membrane protein in China. Prof. Yan was awarded the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2011 by NSFC, and the Yangtze River Scholars Distinguished Professor in 2014 by MOE. In the international scientific community, Prof. Yan is also regarded as one of the outstanding representatives of young Chinese scientists.

Xinian Zuo

Principal investigator, Institute of Psychology, CAS, director of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center Winning project: high precision human brain connectomes map and lifespan development

Dr. Zuo is one of supporting scientists of the three computing methodologies for the International 1000 Functional Connectomes Project (FCP), both the original founder and principal of Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR), and both the initiator and principal of Chinese Brain Development Norm “Chinese Color Nest Project (CCNP)”. He is currently the editorial board members of Network Neuroscience, Science Bulletin (Life Sciences), Frontiers in Neuroscience Frontiers (Brain Imaging Methods), and Frontiers in Psychology (Cognitive Sciences). Dr. Zuo studies the critical scientific problems of connectomics mechanisms of human brain lifespan development and reveals the “high precision and centrality map and its neurobiological basis” and the “mechanism of development trend and abnormality with age” for human brain connectomics.