Shu Xiaokun has been appointed Toby Herfindahl Distinguished Professor at UCSF this year, marking the culmination of his career as a pioneering researcher in fluorescent protein tools developed in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Roger Y. Tsien.
Inspired by physicist Richard Feynman’s quote, Professor Shu Xiaokun’s UCSF lab draws on the idea that “If you don’t find joy, you won’t learn anything. Joy is in discovery and finding something new.”
He now brings this spirit of exploration to China. According to Fudan University, Professor Shu Xiaokun has settled in Shanghai where he will serve as the founding director of the Open Institute for Chemistry and Biotechnology Research and Application.
The institute will officially commence its activities this month, focusing on interdisciplinary research combining physics, chemistry, and biology to develop next-generation fluorescence tools, chemogenetic tools, and targeted cancer therapies.
Professor Shu once shared on his UCSF lab’s website: “Life inside the cell is like a vibrant and colorful world like in Avatar, when we attach various cell proteins to multicolored fluorescent sensors.”
His path to success was not linear. Upon entering university, Professor Shu studied physics, not biology or chemistry. In 1996, he enrolled in the theoretical physics department at Sichuan University and later specialized in solid-state physics at Fudan University.
In 2003, he moved to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, focusing on biomedical physics. During this time, Professor Shu’s work concentrated on the luminescence mechanisms of fluorescent proteins, particularly those with blue, green, orange, and red color bands.
After obtaining his Ph.D. in 2007, he joined Roger Y. Tsien’s lab at the University of California, San Diego, continuing his research on fluorescent proteins. Tsien was a pioneer in using light and color to observe cellular activity and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for developing sensors based on green fluorescent protein (GFP). Professor Shu played a key role in developing GFP variants in this lab.
During his postdoctoral research, Professor Shu invented infrared fluorescent proteins for labeling live animals – a major advancement published in the journal Science. He also developed genetic labeling techniques for electron microscopy, expanding the tools available for biological and biomedical research. These achievements led to his appointment as an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2010. Two years later, he received the NIH Young Innovator Award and a $2.36 million research grant over five years.
After establishing his own lab, Professor Shu continued to integrate physics, chemistry, and biology into his research, spanning a wide range of fields from physical biology to chemical biology, structural biology, protein engineering, and drug development. In 2019, he received the “Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award,” worth $5.91 million over five years, to support research programs in the general medicine field at the National Institute of General Medicine.
According to Fudan University, he has received over $20 million in NIH funding throughout his research career. Shu’s lab website at Fudan states: “We are an interdisciplinary lab that studies the internal workings of cells and living organisms. We welcome applications from highly motivated and independent individuals.”
In other news, a 30-year-old doctor is returning to China as an associate professor in semiconductor technology development, aiming to advance information technologies by developing smaller, faster, and energy-efficient computer chips.
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/nha-sinh-hoc-noi-tieng-roi-vi-tri-danh-gia-o-dai-hoc-tai-my-ve-trung-quoc-2499757.html
