Focus: Eastward bound
From Princeton to Beijing Yigong Shi had everything a scientist could ask for when he was researching the structure of proteins at Princeton University. In fact, just a handful of grants from the US National Institutes of Health meant he could tell his post-doctoral researchers not to bother applying for fellowships. But China continued to be the land of opportunity for Shi, even when he was considering the prospect of a Howard Hughes grant to the tune of 10 million US dollars. And so, in 2008, he returned to Tsinghua University in Beijing, of which he became vice-president in 2015. He is a symbol of China’s ambitions in biomedical sciences, and its ability to gather the brains needed. Life can be difficult. Air pollution is a particular problem, he says. But the abundance of hard-working graduate students and great facilities make it a researcher’s dream. “For career development, you can’t think of a better choice than returning to China”, he says. Photo: Andrew Wong
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Swiss National Science Foundation – Swiss Academies: Horizons No. 108