Elite institutes reveal list of new academicians

China's two elite science and technology institutes on Wednesday announced their results for the biennial selection of new academicians, adorning 133 top scientists and scholars nationwide with the highest academic title in the country.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has selected 59 new academicians while the Chinese Academy of Engineering selected 74, according to the websites of the two institutes.

The new academicians are from various fields of study, covering subjects from space technologies to geology, and from medical and life sciences to agriculture and petrochemicals.

The average age of the 59 newly elected academicians of the CAS is 54.7 years old, with 90 percent of them below the age of 60.

The youngest is 45 years old, and the oldest is 65 years old. Additionally, five of the 59 academicians are female scientists.

Among the 74 academician newcomers at the CAE, 81 percent are below the age of 60, with the youngest 48 years old, and the oldest 76 years old.

Notably, Yan Ning, head of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation and a renowned structural biologist who works at Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences, was selected as a CAS academician.

Yan, 45, whose name is also written as Nieng Yan in professional circles, has been a scientist on the rise in recent years after she left Tsinghua in 2017 to become a professor at Princeton University in the United States where she received her PhD, and returned last year to Tsinghua while helping build the Shenzhen institute.

She was the youngest professor and PhD adviser at Tsinghua, one of the top universities in China. While at Princeton, Yan was elected as the US National Academy of Sciences Foreign Associate in 2019 for her outstanding contribution to biological sciences.

Both the CAS and the CAE announced the start of the selection process in May. Candidates were nominated by existing academicians or recommended by academic societies.

After the selection, the CAS has a total of 873 academicians, while the CAE has 978.