Recently, the 2023 co-opted list of Fellows of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences was announced. Since its establishment in 1867, the Royal Academy of Sciences New Zealand (RSNZ) has been New Zealand's highest-level academic institution and represents the country's academic authority. In 2023, a total of 5 Chinese scientists were elected as Fellows of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences this year.
Academician of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences is one of the highest academic titles in the field of international science, aiming to recognize experts and scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the development of global science and technology. and has made a significant contribution to society.
The Royal New Zealand Academy of Academics brings together 47 Nobel Prize winners, with up to 24 new Fellows elected annually by Ordinary Election and up to 4 additional Fellows by Special Election. As of February 2024, there are 494 Fellows of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences, whose research has not only advanced the academic community, but also had a profound impact on the development of society.
The following are the Chinese scientists elected as Fellows of the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences in 2023:
1, Wang Xiaodong.
Wang Xiaodong. Born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1963, he graduated from Beijing Normal University in 1984 and received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Southwest Medical Center of Dezhou University in 1991. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.
Xiaodong Wang's main contribution is to make a series of groundbreaking, breakthrough and leading achievements in apoptosis research. Apoptosis is a vital life phenomenon in developmental, physiological and pathological processes, and previously the understanding of apoptosis was limited to the cytological and genetic levels. The discovery of genes associated with apoptosis in lower animals has won the NOBEL Prize, but it is unclear how these genes cause apoptosis. He creatively used the knowledge and technology of biochemistry to reveal the apoptosis pathway of programmed cell death, discovered and elucidated the molecular mechanism of mitochondria as the apoptosis control center for the first time, and connected apoptosis by the upstream regulation of mitochondria and the downstream execution pathway. It has revolutionized the traditional understanding that mitochondria provide energy and metabolic sites, and is also the biggest subversion of the half-century belief that the main organelles and their functions in the cell have been discovered. This is not only a conceptual shift in cell biology, but also a significant understanding of basic life activities such as evolution and development, as well as the occurrence and development of major diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Much of the current understanding of the mammalian apoptosis biochemical pathway comes from Xiaodong Wang's lab.
Ten years ago, Wang Xiaodong established a new system in China, and in recent years he has returned to China to serve as a full-time director. Shouldering the important task of "producing mechanisms, talents, and results", the Institute is an experimental field for the reform of China's scientific and technological system. He implements the laboratory director responsibility system, the staff tenure contract system, and the global open recruitment. For re-employment and promotion, international peers are hired to conduct anonymous written evaluations based on their international influence in the field. Implement the sunshine annual salary system, the graduate rotation system, the sharing system of major scientific research equipment and professional and technical personnel, and the normal system of academic exchanges and academic criticism. The Institute has become one of the few research institutes with the most outstanding achievements in life sciences in China, and has made breakthroughs in many fields, such as the discovery of hepatitis B virus receptors, which has solved the problems that have not been solved in the field of widespread and serious hepatitis B disease research in China for decades. More than a dozen young scientists have passed international peer evaluations and have been praised by international peers as leading scientists in their fields.
2, Zhuang Xiaowei.
Zhuang Xiaowei, a biophysicist, graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1991 at the age of 19, and then went to study at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating with a Ph.D. in 1996, he joined Stanford University as a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Steven Chu. In 2001, he joined Harvard University as a professor and served as an assistant professor and associate professor. In 2005, he was hired as a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2006, he was hired as a full professor of chemistry and physics at Harvard University, and established a single-molecule biophysics laboratory named after himself at Harvard University. In 2012, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2015, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zhuang Xiaowei's main research area is biophysics. Her pioneering contributions to photonics methods such as high-resolution optical imaging and single-molecule fluorescence resonance transfer and their applications have greatly contributed to breakthroughs in the field of biomedicine. She has published more than 12,600 citations, and the highest single article has been cited more than 2,000 times.
The optical diffraction limit of hundreds of nanometers of spatial resolution, established by Abbe, restricts the study of the fine structure of subcellular organelles. In 2006, Zhuang Xiaowei's laboratory invented an ultra-high-resolution imaging method based on single-molecule fluorescence detection, namely stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), and applied this method to achieve three-dimensional ultra-high-resolution imaging. Based on photochemical mechanisms, her lab synthesized ultra-bright, light-controlled dyes and fluorescent proteins with the best performance, further advancing resolution to a few nanometers, nearly two orders of magnitude higher than the optical diffraction limit. On this basis, rapid three-dimensional high-resolution fluorescence imaging of live cells has also been developed. This series of technological developments has brought fluorescence microscopy into the era of imaging at the molecular level. These technologies have been adopted by many laboratories around the world, and commercial storm microscopes based on this technology have found their way into imaging platforms and laboratories around the world, including China, greatly facilitating biomedical research.
Zhuang Xiaowei is not only a pioneer in the development of super-resolution imaging methods, but also a leader in the application of these methods. She applies STORM to a wide range of applications, from single-celled organisms to complex mammalian brains, discovering new cellular structures and revealing novel mechanisms of action. For example, she discovered that the membranous skeleton of neuronal axons has a surprisingly regular periodic structure; Ultra-high-resolution large-volume imaging was used to map the synaptic input region of neurons, revealing the effect of this region on direction selectivity. To reveal the necessity of mouse telomere protein TRF2 in telomere loop formation; It was found that the calcium ion channel unique to sperm and other molecules related to calcium signaling pathway formed a special structure, which is of great significance for sperm superactivation. Zhuang Xiaowei is also one of the first researchers to develop single-molecule fluorescence resonance transfer technology into an effective tool for probing the structural dynamics of biomolecules. Her research on RNA folding has revealed single-molecule transient folded intermediate states and multiple folding pathways that are difficult to detect with conventional experiments, demonstrating that RNA folding has a very rugged energy surface. Recently, she invented a high-throughput single-molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization method, MerFish, which can image and quantify thousands of RNAs in their native state in a single cell; She revealed a new regulatory mechanism for chromatin remodeling complexes; She invented a single-virus tracking method to study the interaction of individual viruses into cells with cellular endocytic machinery. These series of works are original works in biology and have been published in top international academic journals.
3, Ye Jun. 
Ye Jun, a physicist, was born in Shanghai in November 1967, graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1989 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1997. He is currently a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Standards, a professor at the University of Colorado, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 2017, he was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ye Jun is mainly engaged in research in the fields of ultra-cold atom-molecule, precision measurement, many-body quantum physics, and laser technology. The main achievements are as follows:1Based on breakthroughs in the fields of ultra-cold atoms and phase-stabilized lasers, the world's most accurate atomic clock has been developed, and many world-first research works have been made. For the first time, a neutral atom-insensitive optical trap method was proposed, which accurately separated the internal and external degrees of freedom of atoms, laying the foundation for the realization of high-precision atomic optical clocks. For the first time, the optical frequency of strontium atoms in the optical lattice was accurately measured, and the strontium atom optical clock system was established, which reached the world's highest indicators in the three key parameters of stability, repeatability and accuracy. The most stable laser was developed and the narrowest laser spectral linewidth was obtained, and the laser stability reached 001hz level. He has pioneered the research on optical phase coherent long-range optical fiber networks for remote comparison of optical frequencies and atomic clock signal distribution. Accurate measurement of optical clock shifts in Fermi atomic systems; It is found that when the number of particles in a multi-body system increases, the measurement precision and accuracy also improve. The many-body quantum spin system, spin symmetry and its influence on the many-body system are studied. And the precise measurement of optical clocks is used to study the topological properties of substances. 2.The realization of polar molecular quantum gases has pioneered the study of fundamental problems in ultracold chemistry and quantum chemistry. In collaboration with Deborah Jin, he prepared the world's first quantum gas with polar molecules, which laid an important foundation for the measurement of ultracold chemistry, correlated quantum matter and physical constants, and opened up a new field of ultracold chemistry. In the control of strongly interacting dipole quantum gases, he creatively used three-dimensional optical lattices to confine polar molecules to independent lattice points one by one, and observed for the first time the long-range dipole interaction of polar molecules fixed in deep three-dimensional optical lattices. 3.The optical frequency comb and its application in spectroscopy were developed, and the frequency comb and its application in the far-ultraviolet and mid-infrared spectral regions were expanded. Is he in John? Hall was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for his experiments. For the first time, he proposed and developed the "direct frequency comb spectrum". These advances have enabled ultra-sensitive detection of human respiratory samples, dangerous trace molecules, chemical reaction kinetics, and ambient gas monitoring.
Ye Jun has made important contributions to the academic exchange, talent training and development of physics in China. For example, since 2004, he has insisted on participating in the laser science symposium, and since 2010, he has become the co-chair of the symposium with Zhang Jie, striving to improve the research level of laser science in China. He has trained a group of young scholars for our country, including many young people. He has also made important contributions to the development of physics disciplines at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, East China Normal University, Shanxi University, and Wuhan Institute of Mathematical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
4, Liang Yi. 
Born in Hubei, China in 1968, Liang Yi, a New Zealand national and a prominent figure in the field of environmental engineering and renewable energy technology, entered the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he specialized in environmental engineering, eventually shaping a career marked by innovation and commitment to sustainability. Liang Yi is currently the Director of the New Zealand Clean Energy Centre, and his research has made a significant contribution to improving energy efficiency and promoting environmental sustainability on a global scale. Under Liang Yi's leadership, his team has developed several groundbreaking projects, including the creation of high-efficiency photovoltaic materials and advanced clean water technologies, which have gained international recognition. These initiatives not only highlight Dr. Leung's commitment to solving pressing energy and environmental challenges, but also reflect his innovative approach to integrating renewable energy solutions into the fabric of modern society. Liang Yi's esteemed scholarship with the Royal New Zealand Academy of Sciences is a testament to his outstanding contributions to the field of environmental engineering and his unwavering pursuit of a sustainable future.
5. Tension and.
Zhang Lihe, a New Zealand national, was born in Guangdong in 1973 and was a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Auckland and deputy director of the New Zealand Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Li Lihe's research expertise includes biomedical signal processing, biomedical imaging, biomedical informatics, and the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
His innovative contributions to cardiology diagnosis, electroencephalogram analysis, neurological disease detection, medical image processing, medical big data mining, etc., have significantly improved the quality and efficiency of medical care, while reducing costs and risks, and promoting inclusivity and equity in healthcare. Professor Zhang's work has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Rutherford Prize from the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Pickering Prize from the Institution of Engineers New Zealand, and the McDee Amid Award from the New Zealand Society of Biomedical Engineering. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineers New Zealand, serves on the editorial boards of several leading international journals, and serves as chair or committee member of several international academic conferences. His leadership and contributions have made him a leading figure in the global biomedical engineering community.