The online edition of Nature, the international weekly journal of science, on June 20 did a lengthy feature on the "Science stars of China" whose contributions have advanced science in China and also impacted the world

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Those featured in the story are Nancy Ip, biotechnology; Wu Ji, space science; Nieng Yan, structural biology; Cui Weicheng, deep sea science; Wang Yifang, particle physics; Caixia Gao, genetic engineering; Qiaomei Fu, genome historian; Qin Weijia, polar explorer; Chen Jining, environmental protection and Chaoyang Lu, quantum information technology.

"These 10 individuals highlight the breadth and promise of innovation in China as the country continues its strong push to become a leader in science," said Richard Monastersky, Nature's features editor.

*Nancy Ip, dean for science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, began her career by studying neurotransmitters at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts then moved to the biotechnology industry where she explored the neurotrophic factors that support neuron survival and growth.

She spends much of her time with her large research group whose work covers basic neural biology and translational science for neurological disorders. Ip plans to take her work to mainland China where she plans to expand clinical research into Alzheimer's disease and train people with expertise in both clinical medicine and research.

* Wu Ji, director general of the Chinese National Space Science Center in Beijing since 2003, has successfully steered China's space program towards basic research instead of a focus on space exploration for national prestige. The center launched the Dark Matter Particle Explorer satellite that can detect electrons and gamma rays with greater resolution than other facilities.

It will launch the Hard X-Ray Modulated Telescope later this year and the world's first space-based experiment that will study the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. China plans to launch five new space science satellites over the next five years. He once famously said "There is no Chinese space science. Only science."

* Nieng Yan looks at how proteins act at the level of atoms. Her work has concentrated on determining the structures of proteins embedded in cells' plasma membranes. She's known for her work on the human glucose transporter GLUT1, a protein essential for supplying energy to cells. The structure of this protein evaded researchers for over 50 years because it rapidly changes its shape. Yan used a series of innovative devices to restrict the movements of the protein.

She did graduate and postdoctoral research at Princeton University in the U.S. then set up her own laboratory at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2007. Yan said one of the benefits of working in the mainland is she never has to worry about money.

* Cui Weicheng is a deep-sea diving expert and was present when China's Jiaolong submersible plunged below 7,000 meters into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific in 2012. Cui and his team are building a tougher, three-person submersible, the Rainbow Fish that intends to descend 11,000 meters into the Challenger Deep Valley at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Because of his passion, China is now one of only a few nations that can explore the deep ocean. Jiaolong allows Chinese scientists to reach 99.8 percent of the ocean floor.

* Wang Yifang aims to make China a leader in particle physics research. The director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Wang leads the effort to build a particle accelerator with a diameter of 100 km, successor to the 27 km Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. China's proposed collider will be seven times more powerful than the LHC and cost $6 billion. When built, it will be the largest in the world.

Wang wants to build two particle colliders. The first will explore the Higgs boson in 2028. The other will collide particles at up to seven times the energy of the LHC.

* Caixia Gao, a plant biologist, is using the controversial but very effective gene editing technique called CRISPR Cas-9 for genetically editing crops, specifically wheat and rice. This work takes place in her lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing and she became the first to use CRISPR Cas-9 for this purpose.

She built-up her expertise working on genetically modifying grass at the seed company DLF in Denmark for 12 years. On her return to China, Gao worked on genetically engineering wheat and developed a disease-resistant variety she hopes to grow and sell in China.

* Qiaomei Fu pursued her PhD in ancient-human genomics at the venerable Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany in 2009. Fu helped to re-draft the history of Europe's earliest modern humans and returned to China last January to lead an ancient-DNA lab at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

At this institute, Fu will focus her energies on the first Homo sapiens to settle Asia, a species that might have arrived some 100,000 years ago.

* Quin Weijia has been to Antarctica half a dozen times. He's the executive deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. In December 2015, he led an international team that scanned thousands of square kilometers with ice-penetrating radar and other sensors mounted aboard China's first fixed-wing aircraft that mapped features under the ice.

The team discovered the longest canyon on Earth and one of the largest melt areas under the ice sheet. He hopes China will be able to retrieve the oldest ice on the Earth to shed light on the history of the Antarctic ice sheets and how they've changed.

* Chen Jinning is minister for environmental protection whose task is to manage China's massive pollution problem that strangles cities, pollutes drinking water and poisons farms. He began by boosting a campaign to stamp-out corruption and ensure that local officials and companies follow anti-pollution rules. He now has the additional authority from Beijing to investigate and prosecute polluters.

* Chaoyang Lu, 33, has been praised as a "wizard of entangled photons." His focus in on quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon where two separate particles behave as if they were a single, combined state so that measurement of one affects the state of the other. The best efforts by other scientists have resulted in the entanglement of just four photons.

Chaoyang, who has returned to work in China, holds the world record at eight, and is working on doing it with 10. Achieving this state could lead to computers of unimaginable speed.

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