By Li Han

Staff Writer of the Tsinghua News Center

Mr. Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, Dr. Jack M. Wilson, President of the University of Massachusetts, and Dr.Craig Mello, the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology/Medicine, visited Tsinghua on December 3. During their visit, Dr. Mello was named Honorary Professor of Tsinghua University at an award ceremony in Tsinghua’s Main Building. Tsinghua Vice President Xie Weihe awarded the letter of appointment to Dr. Mello.

After the award ceremony, Dr. Mello delivered a speech entitled “RNAi: From Mechanism to Medicine”. In his speech, Dr. Mello talked about factors that could lead to success in research and introduced some exciting recent development in RNA research. Dr. Shi Yigong, Vice Director of Tsinghua’s Institute of Biomedicine, hosted the speech.

Tsinghua President Gu Binglin exchanged ideas with the Massachusetts delegation on university development and cooperation. Tsinghua Vice President Xie Weihe and Professor Zheng Yankang, Vice Chairman of the University Council, also participated in the discussion. Mr. Patrick and Dr. Wilson both stressed the value of collaboration.

Dr. Mello received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. He joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1994 where he is currently the Blais Professor of Molecular Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Mello and Dr. Andrew Fire of Stanford University were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine “for their discovery of RNA interference-gene silencing by double-stranded RNA” in 2006.

(Photo by Guo Haijun)