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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.”
CREDITS: COURTESY OF CAS Talent and Education in CAS CAS Talent Cultivation and Recruitment Program Introduction In September 2009, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) launched the Talent Cultivation and Recruitment Program. This is a system-wide project, aimed at increasing recruitment and developing talent in various fields, with an overall goal of creating greater adaptability to the constantly changing requirements for expertise in China. This program includes four major components. The first is the “Cultivation and Recruitment Plan of High-Level Talent,” which is being implemented mainly through the national Thousand Talents Program and the CAS Hundred Talents Program. These plans select top-level scientists who demonstrate ambition, ability, and passion. The second component is the “Cultivation Plan of Excellent Young Scientists,” which aims to advance young scientists by providing special funding and through the establishment of organizations like the Youth Innovation Promotion Association. The third part of the program is the “Training Plan for Technical Talents and Administrators,” which aims to retain the key technical talent within CAS, while recruiting further outstanding technical talent, and recognizing and motivating these experts in effective ways. The fourth component is the “Overseas Intelligence Introduction and International Exchanges Plan,” which focuses on attracting and sponsoring outstanding overseas scholars and international scientists who are active at the forefront of science and technology to visit or work at CAS. By the end of 2011, CAS had successfully introduced 253 high-level overseas researchers through the Thousand Talents Program, and recruited and supported 2,273 outstanding scientists from both domestic and overseas institutes, through the Hundred Talents Program. In addition, 690 young scientists have been given targeted, comprehensive research training by the Youth Innovation Promotion Association. Moreover, CAS selects and supports 300 young scientists annually for study abroad. In order to strengthen the cultivation of excellent young scientists in the institutes located in the western region of China, CAS has launched the “Western Light Scientists Project”. To date, 876 scientists have been sponsored, 187 Ph.D. students have been trained, and 234 visiting scholars from the western provinces have been nurtured through this project. To build a strong team of support staff at CAS institutes, awards—financial and otherwise— have been given to 78 technical experts at home and abroad. Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 top workers have attended training and management courses through Lenovo College, as well as various training courses, forums, and seminars. To support international cooperation, 92 research groups have been formed through the International Partner Group Program, which has attracted 694 excellent scientific research personnel. Furthermore, 742 outstanding foreign scientists have been brought to China and honored as CAS Visiting Professors for Senior International Scientists, while 240 young researchers from different countries have won the CAS Fellowships for Young International Scientists. The CAS Hundred Talents Program Introduced in 1994, the Hundred Talents Program is the first high-quality talent recruitment program in China. With financial support from the Ministry of Finance, the goal of the program is to recruit hundreds of outstanding young scientists from abroad and within China through the end of the 20th century. To ensure successful implementation, CAS made the following improvements: institutes are authorized to create positions according to actual demands; select the awardees with an open, transparent, and competitive selection process; perform the recruitment process openly; and provide financial support to the awardees. The plan has been gradually expanded, particularly during the national 12th Five- Year Plan period. According to the National Medium- and Long-term Talents Development Program and the CAS Talents Strategic Plan, CAS has further improved the management in many ways, including allowing foreigners to apply, increasing financial support, increasing the number of awardees, and expanding the award categories. At present, the program supports not only the returnees from overseas but also the talent recruited from domestic organizations as well as providing additional financial support to the awardees of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars [1] and the Youth Thousand Talents Program [2]. CAS also encourages institutes to directly recruit talent from aboard. When the program has been operational for three years, CAS will assess CAS/In Focus Professor Pan Jianwei (center), an awardee in the Thousand Talents Program, discusses an experiment in multiphoton entanglement with his colleagues and students. Professor Chen Yaning (third from left), sponsored by the Western Light Scientists Project, elucidates the eco-hydrological process, the mechanisms, and adaptation strategy of the desert riparian forest in response to drought stress in arid region of the Inland River Basin. By the end of 2011, CAS had successfully introduced 253 high- level overseas researchers through the Thousand Talents Program. 39
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