Chinese Academy of Sciences (PDF) - low res version

38
News Report
Ding Hong
“It makes you
happy when you
can work with
people who
are so talented
and at least
partially share
your interests.”
Philipp Khaitovich
Editorial News Report
organized in the Soviet style—it was very
politically influenced,” he says. Under KIP
the institute was reorganized and internationalized,
and researchers gained more
control over how it is run. Such changes
made the institute more appealing to sea
turtles and others, and today, “Our institute
has a lot of top mathematicians from all
over the world,” he says.
For Jiang Lei, a professor at the Institute
of Chemistry in Beijing, China’s improving
quality of life was a factor in his decision to
return. Jiang completed part of his Ph.D.
work at the University of Tokyo, then worked
in Japan for five years, first as a postdoc at
the same university and then as a researcher
at the Kanagawa Academy of Sciences
and Technology. “When I was in Japan I
went back to China every year, and every
year I saw the changes,” he says. “This was
very important for me in making the decision
to come back to China.” Jiang joined
the Institute of Chemistry in 1999, and became
a member of CAS just 10 years later.
He studies materials found in nature, such
as spider webs and lotus leaves, to identify
what gives them their special properties,
then mimics their structures to devise products
such as self-cleaning glass.
In some fields, China’s natural environment
also helps with recruitment. In 2007,
as he was finishing his Ph.D. work in vertebrate
paleontology at Harvard University,
Canadian Corwin Sullivan found himself
with a choice between a postdoc position
at the University of Toronto at Mississauga,
where he’d done his Master’s, and one at
IVPP in Beijing. “Even then we heard so
much in the West about Chinese vertebrate
paleontology and the things that were being
discovered here,” he says. “Everyone
was talking about field opportunities in
China and opportunities to collaborate with
Chinese colleagues, so to actually come
to the IVPP seemed like a great
opportunity.” When IVPP offered
him an associate professorship
a few years later, he took it without
hesitation, in part because
China’s rich and relatively unexplored
fossil record makes it an
excellent place for researchers in
his field. “We’re seeing a bit of a
fossil gold rush here,” he says.
At IVPP he has been involved in
describing several new dinosaur
species, some with feathers and
other bird-like characteristics.
China is also of particular interest for ecosystem researchers, says Fu
Bojie, a professor at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences
(RCEES) in Beijing. Fu was a member of the first cohort of students to
enter a university after the Cultural Revolution, and later spent a year at
the University of Stirling in Scotland as part of his Ph.D. work. He joined
RCEES in 1989 but couldn’t get adequate research funding, so in 1992
he again left China, this time for a postdoc at the Catholic University of
Leuven’s Institute for Land and Water Management in Belgium. He
returned in 1994, drawn by China’s diversity of ecosystems and the
promise of a promotion to full professor. “For my research, being in China
provides me more opportunities,” he says. Since then, he has seen
RCEES improve continuously. “The institute has had a dramatic change
in the past 10 years, in terms of young talent, equipment, atmosphere,
and institutional management,” he says. Now a member of CAS, Fu
helps coordinate the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN),
a 24-year-old project that monitors ecosystems across the country
(see page 35).
Physics is another field where CAS has a particular recruitment
advantage, says Ding Hong, chief scientist at Beijing National Laboratory
for Condensed Matter Physics, part of the Institute of Physics (IOP). In
2008, Ding left a tenured position at Boston College to take his current
job. “I feel the potential in basic science in China over the next 10 years
is much better than in the United States,” he explains. “The United
States passed its peak in basic science investment several decades
ago, but China is just starting its so-called golden years of science.”
Since Ding uses synchrotron radiation to characterize materials,
government investment in high-cost basic science facilities directly
benefits his work (see page 27). He has published numerous well-cited
papers on the properties of iron-based superconductors since going
to Beijing.
For Philipp Khaitovich, a group leader at the CAS-Max Planck Society
Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB), it was the institute’s
early entry into an emerging field that was most attractive. A native of Moscow,
Khaitovich was working at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Germany when he heard about plans for the PICB. “At
that time, six or seven years ago, it was not so common to have high
throughput bioinformatics data analysis and experimental labs in the same
institute,” he says. Khaitovich joined the PICB in 2006; his research focuses
on discerning the molecular-level differences between human brains
and those of other primates. “In many respects it has been better than I
expected, because we really have some excellent students and postdocs
in our group,” he says of his time at PICB. “It makes you happy when
you can work with people who are so talented and at least partially share
your interests.”
As China’s investment in sciences continues to grow, its need for skilled
researchers who thrive in an international environment is set to keep expanding
as well. One example is provided by the Institute for Plasma
Physics Director Li Jiangang, who oversees nuclear fusion development.
“For future research, we need a huge team,” he says, explaining
that building a reactor requires about 2,000 people. To meet that need
his institute places a high priority on recruitment at home and abroad,
though without losing sight of the importance of developing existing staff:
about 50 personnel are sent abroad for training or exchange each year,
Li says.
CAS’s recruits report that they find the academy to be a great place to
pursue a career. Writes IB-CAS’s Liu, “Indeed, the best job opportunities for
Chinese young scientists who received rigorous scientific training overseas
are at home.”