Prof. BAI Chunli, a well-known chemist and leading scientist in nano-science, has recently taken the presidency of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Prof. BAI succeeded Prof. LU Yongxiang as the new leader of China’s major think-tank and research institution. 

Prof. LU Yongxiang and Prof. BAI Chunli (Image by HAO Yuanzheng/Xinhua)

Prof. BAI Chunli has been Executive Vice-President of CAS since 2004. He has also served as Vice-President of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), President of the Graduate University of CAS (GUCAS), Director of the Academic Division of Chemistry and Member of the Executive Committee of the Presidium of the Academic Divisions of CAS.

Prof. BAI graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Peking University in 1978 and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the CAS Institute of Chemistry in 1981 and 1985 respectively. From1985 to 1987, he worked with the California Institute of Technology, U.S.A., in the field of physical chemistry as a post-doctorate associate and visiting scholar. After he returned to China in 1987, he continued his research at the CAS Institute of Chemistry. From 1991 to 1992, he worked as a visiting professor at Tohoku University in Japan.

His research areas include the structure and properties of polymer catalysts, X-ray crystallography of organic compounds, molecular mechanics and EXAFS research on electro-conducting polymers. In the mid-1980s, he shifted his research to the fields of scanning tunneling microscopy and molecular nanotechnology.

Prof. BAI has a long list of scientific publications and has won more than twenty prestigious awards and prizes for his academic achievements. Because of his academic achievements, he was elected a Member of CAS and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) in 1997. He is also a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Foreign Member of Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and honorary doctor or professor of several foreign universities. Prof. BAI also serves as the Chief Scientist for the National Steering Committee for Nanoscience and Technology and was the Founding Director of China National Center for Nanoscience and Technology.

Prof. BAI is also the Vice President of TWAS, Member of the Executive Committee of IUPAC (2008-2009), and Member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of JACS, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials and Chemical Physics Letters.