Shi Yigong: Return to Alma Mater

By GU SHUXIA & ZHOU XIANGNAN

Shi Yigong in his lab.

SHI Yigong, world-renowned structural biologist and the youngest professor in the Department of Molecular Biology of Princeton University, gave up his thriving career in the U.S. to return to his alma mater Tsinghua University in February 2008.  

A Valued Leading Figure

Shi Yigong showed great academic ability from a young age, and had particular interest in mathematics and physics. He graduated from high school with outstanding grades and received offers from several of China's best universities. Shi chose to study at Tsinghua University's Department of Biological Science and Biotechnology and in 1989 graduated at the top of his grade with a double major in biology and mathematics. The next year, he went to the United States to pursue a doctorate in biophysics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

After completing his doctoral study in 1995, Shi joined the Structural Biology Laboratory of Tumor Suppressors and Oncogenes at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York as a postdoctoral fellow. But just two years into his research project, he was offered an assistant professorship by the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and joined them in February 1998.

The school put US $500,000 initial funding and a laboratory at his disposal. The scientific research in Shi's laboratory was aimed at understanding the structural and molecular mechanisms involved in the formation of tumors, with a focus on key cellular processes.

It was his work on the mechanisms of apoptosis, the process of programmed cell death that, when disordered, can lead to cancerous tumors, that won him the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award by the Protein Society. Shi was just 36 at that time and the first Chinese scientist to receive such an honor.

Shi Yigong's outstanding achievements were fully recognized and he moved rapidly up the ranks at Princeton. He was given tenure in 2001, after just three years of teaching instead of the required six, and two years after that he became the youngest tenured professor in the history of Princeton's Department of Molecular Biology. In 2007, Shi was honored with endowed chair professor, the highest academic position at Princeton.

There can be no doubt that Shi is one of the top scientists in his field with the U.S.'s top universities, including Harvard, MIT, and John Hopkins, clamoring to get him on their staff. Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded him a US $10 million grant on the condition that he stay at Princeton University, which provided him with the biggest laboratory and largest research fund in the department. The U.S. government also lavished him with funding, including five independent grants from the U.S. National Institute of Health, and he has recieved sponsorship from a number of private companies.

With such a sparkling career in the U.S., where Princeton helped him buy a spacious house and where his twin children, a son and a daughter, went to kindergarten, you would not think that he would have any desire to leave. But despite all this, Shi Yigong decided to leave the life he had built there and return to his home country with his family.

Many people were surprised and shocked at his decision. "He was one of our stars," Robert H. Austin, a Princeton physics professor, said when asked about Shi's departure, "I thought he was crazy."

In the two years since Shi came back and became the dean of life sciences at Tsinghua University, nearly 20 scientists have returned there from overseas. "Tsinghua has set up a number of new laboratories and created an alliance with outside laboratories. This has strongly improved our research capability and made us much more competitive globally," Shi Yigong states. 

However, Shi still believes that the Chinese talent reserve has a serious problem. China is now home to 47 million professionals, outnumbering the U.S. by five million. "But only 10,000 of them are high-level talent whereas the number in the U.S. has reached nearly one million," says Shi Yigong. "In short, the stock of high-level talent remains weak in China. Other experts and I hope the number will increase to 100,000 and even one million someday."

Recruiting Young Talent

 "Though I'm doing the same job as I did in the US, I feel more confident at Tsinghua University," Shi says. "Every morning I wake up excited, thinking I'm going to have a rich new day. When your heart is full of purpose, you are full of energy." 

Shi Yigong is dedicated to his role at Tsinghua, and often arrives at his office before 8 a.m. and does not call it a day until midnight. According to his student Zhang Xu, Professor Shi is always ready to help students. He visits laboratories to direct experiments and discuss research ideas with students, and anyone can come to his office to ask him questions.

As dean of the School of Life Sciences and vice executive president of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University, Shi Yigong believes that outstanding talents need a supportive academic environment and he makes great effort with his teams in this regard. He plans to reform the personnel system in order to clarify the relationship between leaders' authority and their responsibility to alleviate administrative burdens on the leadership, and set up a professor evaluation system that is compatible with international norms. "Once the plan is approved by the university's leaders, it will bring about changes in the school's scientific research," Shi says confidently.

In the meantime, a reform in teaching is underway, and students are encouraged to show more initiative in their studies. Tsinghua's School of Life Sciences is in talks with Peking University and National Institute of Biological Sciences to establish joint postgraduate programs, in which nearly 100 professors will teach their best subjects. 

As for the school's long-term goal, Shi is confident that in the next decade Tsinghua will produce a batch of influential scientific advances annually and significant and historically important scientific achievements every two or three years. "A management model is forming in the School of Life Sciences that will enable talents to tap their full potential. Our accomplishments are going to set an example for Chinese universities and scientific research institutions," he concludes.