Peking University, Sept. 17, 2012: Lately, Hu Jiazhi, a PKU student from School of Life Science, was announced to be one of the winners for 2012 the Ray Wu Prize for excellence in Life Science.

The Ray Wu Prize for Excellence in Life Sciences, established in 2009, is to inspire Asia’s most promising young Ph.D. students to become future leaders in life sciences. The prize consists of USD$3000, a medal, a certificate, and a citation by the Ray Wu Memorial Fund (RWMF). The candidates must be graduate students who are pursuing their Ph.D. in institutions located in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore. The awarding ceremony will be held at Zhejiang University on November 18.

The program opened the door for thousands of more Chinese students to study abroad and marked the beginning of Sino-US exchanges in life science research. This prize is dedicated in honor of Professor Ray Wu’s seminal contributions in training China’s new generation of biologists.

Professor Ray Wu (1928-2008) was a world-renowned biologist who, in the 1970s, developed the first method for DNA sequencing and pioneered the recombinant DNA technology. In the later part of his career, he devoted to genetic engineering of rice. Professor Wu was a life-long advocate for developing life science research in Asia. In 1982, Professor Wu initiated the first large-scale exchange program in biology which brought over 400 students from China to obtain Ph.D. degrees in the US.

Hu Jiazhi, admitted to PKU as an undergraduate student in 2002, started pursuing his Ph.D. in 2006 under the guidance of Professor Kong Daochun. His research papers are mostly published in the world famous periodicals like Cell. Because of his outstanding work, he was awarded PKU Donggang Scholarship and the first prize of Johnson & Johnson Asia Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award in Bio-tech.

Written by: Zhang Jiang

Source: PKU News (Chinese)