At 11:30 am on November 1st, 2022, Professor Nieng Yan, wearing a pair of white shoes, gracefully walked onto the stage of the 2022 Shenzhen Global Innovation Talent Forum. The large screen behind her shows “There and Back Again”.

There and Back Again

After working at Princeton University for five years, she returned to China and came to Shenzhen to be the first president of a brand-new medical academy – Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation -- that was written into the Central Government's "Support for Shenzhen's Construction of a Pilot Demonstration Zone":

Why did she come back? Why Shenzhen? The answers are revealed in the following speech:

There and Back Again

November 1, 2022

Hello everyone, I am Nieng Yan! 

It is an honour to speak with all of you at the Shenzhen Global Innovation Talent Forum.

On November 1st, 2017, my lab at Princeton University officially opened. In a blink of the eye, it has been five years.

The moment I walked out of the Tsinghua campus as an undergraduate, I felt reluctant to leave -- dreaming that I might someday be invited back to Tsinghua as a professor. This dream surprisingly came true 10 years earlier than expected. In 2007, when I left Princeton University to return to China to fulfill this dream, I felt a similar reluctance in the pursuit of my second career dream: that maybe after I accomplish world-renowned achievements in my fifties, I could be invited back to work at Princeton University. To my surprise, my second dream came true 10 years earlier than expected as well.

The first stage is absorption, where we strive to learn and enrich ourselves. The second stage is proof, where we work hard to gain recognition. The third stage is output, where we pass on what we have learned to others, help others, and support others.

After accumulating for several decades, I have the confidence to actively enter the third stage of my life, which is to build a platform to support more excellent scholars, to respond to human health challenges, to explore challenging biomedical problems, to make original breakthroughs, and to give back to society.

Shenzhen gave me the offer I needed. Once again, I strongly felt the excitement and joy of moving towards my dreams!

So, I have quickly submitted my resignation to Princeton University, and have made arrangements for the existing members of my laboratory. I will soon return to China full-time to assist in the creation of a new research and development institution in Shenzhen that integrates multiple functions such as scientific research, transformation, funding support and student training. It will be called the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, known simply by its acronym: SMART.

When it comes to this, you may say, “Professor Yan! Stop! Aren't you doing fundamental research? Does your research have anything to do with medicine? In fact, modern medicine has gone beyond the narrow mode of diagnosis, prescription, and surgery. It has become socomplex that it requires interdisciplinary work in biology, chemistry, materials science, mechanics, electronics, artificial intelligence, and other fields.

Let me share a research story that will soon be published in the journal Cell.

We hope that in SMART, we not only generate innovative research breakthroughs, but also that we establish a scientific mechanism that allows professionals to focus on their specialties and to ensure that researchers can concentrate on academic research and that their results can be effectively translated.

Why choose Shenzhen? Because Shenzhen is young and vibrant. Everything is possible here!

At the beginning, I had concerns about the city because in Shenzhen, everyone is too hardworking! Some say Shenzhen is the capital of “involution,” the city of internal competition. Being too busy all the time could reduce the space for dreams and inspiration, which might hinder innovation as a result. However, when I came here and spent weekends climbing Ma Luan Mountain, taking boats on the Maozhou River and enjoying fragrant coffee with exquisite desserts while reading at Jingui Natural Book House, I beheld the livable aspect of Shenzhen.

I agree more with another nickname of Shenzhen: City of Dreams.

My third dream is that through the joint efforts of our generation and several generations, Shenzhen will occupy an important place in the world's biopharmaceutical map in ten or twenty years. When people talk about the biopharmaceutical Greater Bay Area, they will think of Shenzen first!

I want to take this opportunity to extend an invitation from SMART to you:

Join us. Be SMARTer!

Welcoming talents from all over the world to join Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation.

Let's build Shenzhen into a hub of biopharmaceuticals!

Please send your resumé to

talent@smart.org.cn

Introduction of Professor Nieng Yan

Her research focuses primarily on the study of the structure and mechanism of transmembrane transport proteins. She in known internationally for her role in thethe atomic resolution structures of a series of important transmembrane proteins that have physiological and pathological significance, including human glucose transporter, eukaryotic voltage-gated sodium ion channel, and calcium ion channel. Her findings provide a molecular basis for understanding the pathogenesis of related diseases and drug development. Since 2009, as a corresponding or co-corresponding author, Nieng Yan has published nearly 80 academic research papers. Among them, 33 are in Cell, Nature, and Science.

Nieng Yan received the Science/AAAS and GE Healthcare Young Scientist Award (North America) in 2005; the first HHMI International Early Career Scientist Award and the China Outstanding Young Female Scientist Award in 2012; the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Award for Scientific and Technological Progress in 2014; the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics Young Investigator Award and the Theophilus Redwood Lectureship (terminated in 2018) in 2015; the first Alexander Cruickshank speaker from mainland China at the Gordon Research Conference in 2016; the FAOBMB Excellent Research Award in 2018; the international Women in Science Award presented by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 2019; and the Anatrace Membrane Protein Research Award presented by the International Biophysics Association in 2021.

On April 30th, 2019, Nieng Yan was elected as a foreign academician of the National Academy of Sciences in United States. On April 22th, 2021, she was elected as a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.