‘Impossible for Chinese’: Yale scientist Zhang Kai leaves US to break racial ceiling

hang Kai has joined the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province.

Photo: Handout For Zhang Kai, a pioneering scientist who is building an ultra-large-scale cellular structure group data bank with unprecedented precision, returning home to China was the natural choice to fulfil his ambition. “In the United States, it is almost impossible for a Chinese scholar to take the lead on this project,” Zhang said during a March 26 interview with China Science Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the country’s most prestigious research institution.

On January 12, Zhang resigned from his tenure-track position at Yale University and officially joined the School of Life Sciences and Medicine at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui province.

A month later, a paper for which he was the corresponding author was published in the prestigious journal Nature.

It reported a breakthrough in his research field: high-resolution electron microscopy imaging and analysis technology.

Zhang Kai’s research looks at the structure of mitochondria, often called the powerhouse of the cell.

Photo: Shutterstock This research is widely seen as essential for understanding life, developing new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, and improving health management.

Zhang’s path to prominence began more than 20 years ago, from modest beginnings.

Hailing from a poor rural area in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province, Zhang in 2004 entered the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in the northeast after taking the national college entrance examination.

In 2008, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and then gained admission to CAS’ Institute of Biophysics.

It was here that he was introduced to cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).

Cryo-EM is an imaging technique that allows researchers to visualise the structure of biological macromolecules – a passion that has shaped Zhang’s career ever since. “It is quite different from most traditional biology directions, which mainly rely on experiments,” Zhang explained in a 2020 interview with HIT. “Research in the field of cryo-EM organically combines the three major research methods: experiments, theory and computation.” In the interview, he described a sci-fi aspiration that took root at an early age: a wish to directly “see” the atomic structure of the respiratory chain complexes within mitochondria, often called the powerhouse of the cell.

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原文链接: 南华早报