On 21 September, the 2019 Annual Qiu Shi Awards Presentation Ceremony was held at Tsinghua University. Hang SHI, a principal investigator at the School of Science of Westlake University received the year’s Qiu Shi Outstanding Young Scholar Award.

Shi, born in 1985, received his PhD in organic chemistry from Peking University in 2013. He conducted his postdoctoral research at Harvard University between 2013 and 2015. During his postdoc research at Harvard, he also focused on radiochemistry studies conducted by the Massachusetts General Hospital. From 2015 to 2018, he continued his postdoc research at Scripps Research Institute. Shi joined Westlake University in September 2018.

Shi’s current research interests include developing novel transition metal catalysts based on reaction mechanisms, and exploring efficient chemical conversion methods and synthetic methods of functional molecules.

The honorable award went to an list of young scientists including Shuai GUO (Peking University), Guixin LI (Southern University of Science and Technology), Zhu LIU (Tsinghua University), Min PENG, Chao WANG, and others. Its sister award, the year’s Qiu Shi Outstanding Scientist Award is granted to Feng SHAO (National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing) and Professor Ning YAN (Princeton University). This year marks the 25th anniversary of Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation, and the foundation awarded its Qiu Shi Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Chen-Ning YANG.

Founded by the well-known industrialist Dr Chi Ming CHA in 1994, the Foundation—which champions the adage of assistance instead of accolades—is committed to promote the advancement of science and technology in China. Over the past 25 years, 358 award laureates from science and technology fields including math, physics, chemistry, biomedical, information technology and engineering have received the awards. Xiaofeng GAO, a principal investigator at Westlake University’s School of Life Science received the same annual award in 2018.