2016 Awardees at Ceremony

Yu Hou

Background: Ms. Hou received her bachelor degree from China Agricultural University in 2012, and is conducting her Ph.D. research in the laboratory of Dr.Tang Fuchou in Peking University. Yu’s research interest focuses on stem cells and epigenetics. She was involved in two main research projects. In her first project, she performed genome analyses of single human oocytes using multiple annealing and looping based amplification cycle (MALBAC) sequencing technology. She and coworkers demonstrated the key biological features of human oocyte meiosis. Moreover, MALBAC-based pre-implantation genomic screening (PGS) in in vitro fertilization (IVF) enables accurate and cost-effective selection of viable fertilized eggs for embryo transfer. In the second project, she developed the sequencing analysis technique for single cell multi groups, and revealed the internal heterogeneity of cancer tissues from multiple perspectives.

Citation: Ms. Hou is very sharp. She has excellent experimental skills, and the curiosity/willingness to learn all aspects of the project. She is very capable in combining different methods together. Her presentation was clear.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Gaowen Liu

Background: She conducts evolutionary biology research at Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. The Ph.D. project she worked on was a huge systems biology project involving a massive amount of experiments of different nature. As a main driver of the project, she needed significant independence to conduct experiments not only in operation but also in designing and finding the most effective ways to generate and analyze numerous large datasets, which required a lot of thinking, planning, innovation, and organizational skills. She explained very well the scientific significance of her project in redefining the concept of gene essentiality, cellular evolvability, and its broader implications in cancer development and drug resistance.

Citation: Her project had multiple components including yeast genetics, bioinformatics, computer programming, statistics, cell biology, and imaging. From her presentation and response to questions, it was apparent that she had a very good understanding of all the different aspects of the large complex project. It was also apparent that she not only worked hard to get the unbelievable amount of experiments done but also made significant intellectual contributions which, as her supervisor commented, made the project successful. For unknown reasons, she was not informed to give a presentation for the interview. So the interview panel asked her to use her recent Cell paper to describe what she had done and plans to do in future. Even without preparation, she was able to present with confidence and high clarity about the questions they asked, their experimental design, data analysis, interpretation of results, and future directions. She has a good command of English (she was educated in a foreign language school in China) and verbal skills are outstanding. She exhibited strong motivation. She worked on a very ambitious project involving analysis of over a thousand genes, dissection of 15000 tetrads, ran 15000 PCRs, and analyzed several thousands of FACS profiles. And she did all these in three years and published her work in Cell! This unbelievable achievement reflects her strong motivation, dedication, hard working, perseverance, organization, and an extraordinary ability to extract meaning from the vast amount of data. She was able to understand and ask most questions very well, reflecting her good understanding of her field of research.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Daisong Wang

Background:  Mr. Wang received his bachelor degree from Shandong University in 2012, and entered the Ph.D. program in the laboratory of Dr. Zeng Yi at Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, CAS in 2014. His research project is to characterize the role of a newly identified Wnt-target gene, Procr, in the mouse mammary gland. He identified a specific mammary stem cell marker, Procr, and proved that Procr+ cells are at the top of the hierarchy, giving rise to all differentiated cell types in the adult mammary epithelium.

Citation:  Mr. Wang did very nice work in developing the unique approach to successfully select the stem cells. He is able to design experiments independently, clearly not just following PI’s guidance. He showed broad knowledge of the stem cell research field, but a bit unwilling to explore new things. He also discussed his own ideas of future studies and his independent speculations of how cell conversions may occur. He demonstrated his general interests in stem cell research. He is interested in taking a multiplex approach to study cell conversions. His answers are clear and concise.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Lei Zhu

Background: Mr. Zhu recieved his bachelor degree from Second Military Medical University in 2011, and entered the Ph.D. program in Shanghai Changzheng Hospital in 2013. His advisor is Dr. Chen Aimin. He engaged in the clinical and experimental studies of repairing peripheral nerve injuries. He invented a new operation strategy called S1 nerve root transfer.

Citation:  Being a clinician, Mr. Zhu clearly knows his own interest and invented the totally novel approach to repair the nerve after injury. His approach is based on solid scientific reasoning, and thorough experiments with different animal models from mice to monkeys. The strategy is briliiant. He is both knowledgeable in clinical medicine and basic science. He keeps looking for new challenges to broaden his knowledge and applications to treat patients.He is very confident. Give sharp answers. He has a big vision and wants to develop more new approaches to treat more patients.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Biao Ma

Background: Mr.Ma received his BS from Tianjin Normal University in 2011. He began his Ph.D. study under the direction of Dr. Chen Quan at Nankai University in 2013. Biao worked on the molecular regulation of Hippo pathway in response to hypoxia. He identified that Lats2, a critical kinase for hippo pathway, is the substrate of Siah2. Continuing his work, he demonstrated that Zyxin is required for down regulation of TGF-band hypoxia-induced Lats2 and deactivation of Hippo signaling in MDA-MB-231 cells.

Citation:  Mr. Ma did very solid work. He has independent ideas, and understands the relationship between tumor biology and development. He can discuss questions about broad fields. He knows the limits of some experiments, and pinpointed the key problem. He answered questions accurately. He showed potentials.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Sai Luo

Background: Ms. Luo obtained her B.S in biological sciences in Xiamen University in 2011. She entered the joint graduate program (PTN) between Peking-Tsinghua Universities and NIBS in 2011, and joined Dr. Shen Xiaohua’s lab in 2012. Sai mainly focuses on long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) mediated transcriptional and epigenetic regulation in embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Her work revealed that positive regulation of nearby transcription by divergent lncRNAs could be a general theme of mammalian gene regulation. Divergent lncRNAs as ‘cis-regulators’ tend to participate in similar biological processes as their protein neighbors.

Citation: Ms. Luo did very nice work. She knows the significance of each project and the details of her experiments, even the limit of her methods of study. She has a good knowledge base, and was interested in learning more about RNA structure and methods to study the structure. She responded to questions clearly, and showed confidence.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Fan Zhou

Background: Mr. Zhou received his bachelor degree from Datong University in 2010, and entered the Ph.D. program in the laboratory of Dr. Liu Bing in the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in 2013. Fan has always been interested in the development of hematopoietic stem cells. He was successful in single-cell functional purification of embryonic hematopoietic stem cells(HSCs). He then worked with Dr. Tang Fuchou and successfully analyzed the transcriptome characteristics of five related cell populations during the formation of HSCs at the single-cell level.

Citation: Mr. Zhou did very nice work. He discovers new cell markers. He can tell a good story about his work, and careful about his experiments. He knows the details of most related fields. During the interview, his presentation is good, and he showed high enthusiasm about his research.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Haibin Wang

Background: Mr. Wang entered the PhD program in Second Military Medical University, where he studies under Dr. Yuan Wen since 2013. He study on the mechanism of non-coding RNA in degenerative spinal disease. He and collaborators ' work is to understand the generation, regulation and function of circular RNA in mannals. They demonstrated the function of the flanking intronic complementary sequences in exon circularization and the generation of complex alternative circularization products.

Citation:  Mr. Wang did nice work, willing to learn/explore new things. He spent quite a bit of time in a basic research lab to work on this project even though his job is a physician. He demonstrated sound understanding of the science behind his project and worked very hard to get these achievements. He has his own ideas on how to identify the functions of the novel circular RNAs. He can relate the results from basic research to clinical applications. His speaks fluently and confidently. Besides his clinic training, he also loves basic research and would like to persue his careeer in basic research.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Xing Zhang

Background: Ms. Zhang entered the PhD program in Peking University, where her studies under Dr. Guo, Hongwei in 2011. Her research interest is on phytohormone signaling transduction. She works on investigating the development of apical hook in Arabidopsis thaliana. Her work showed that Jasmonates-activated transcription factor MYC2 represses EIN3 function by promoting EIN3 degradation and inhibiting its DNA-binding ability.

Citation: Ms. Zhang did very nice work. She systematically identified the relevant genes. She has a good knowledge base. She could present her project clearly, step-by-step, and has a fairly good vision about science.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.

Yulong Niu

Background: Mr. Niu received his bachelor degree from Sichuan University in 2010, and entered the Ph.D. program in the laboratory of Dr. Yang Yi in Sichuan University in 2012.The overall aim of his studies has been to develop novel bioinformatics tools for studying protein-protein interactions. He then developed a software for analysis of correlations and similarities among the phylogenetic profiles of the human proteome to predict likelihood of functional and structural interactions between any given human protein pairs. He found that the ATP synthase complex has evolved from multiple functionally distinct modules.

Citation:  Mr. Niu was able to map potential protein interactions by informatics analyses. Some of the conclusions have been verified by experimental results from collaborators. He could to expand the discussion beyond his lab project. He is very calm, and answer questions clearly.


This prize is sponsored by Taikang Asset Management (HongKong) Company Limited and Taikang Community (Beijing) Investment Co., Ltd.