By Li Han
Staff Writer of the Tsinghua News Center
Dr. Shi Yigong was recently appointed as Vice Director of Tsinghua’s Institute of Biomedicine.
Born in 1967, Shi Yigong received B.S. Degree from Tsinghua University in 1989 and PhD degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1995.
Shi Yigong was a postdoctoral fellow in the Structural Biology Laboratory of Tumor Suppressors and Oncogenes at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York from 1996 to 1998. He began his independent career as an Assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in 1998. He was promoted to the ranks of Associate Professor in 2001 and Professor in 2003. At an age of 36, he became the youngest, tenured Full Professor in the history of Princeton’s Department of Molecular Biology. In 2007, Dr. Shi was named Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor, an endowed chair, in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University.
Scientific research in Dr. Shi’s laboratory is aimed at understanding the structural and molecular mechanisms involved in tumorigenesis, with a focus on key regulatory components in the apoptotic pathways and other important cellular processes. He has published over 90 papers in international journals, including as corresponding author eleven in Cell, six in Nature, and three in Science. Due to his outstanding research contribution, Dr. Shi was awarded the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award by the Protein Society in 2003 and became the first Chinese scientist to win such honor. He has been the President of the Chinese Biological Investigators Society (CBIS) since 2005.
Dr. Shi was appointed a Chair Professor of Tsinghua’s Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology in 2003 and a Tsinghua Changjiang Professor in 2006. He becomes Vice Director of Tsinghua’s Institute of Biomedicine and Vice Dean of Tsinghua’s Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology in 2007.
Dr. Shi will also lead the Center for Structural Biology at Tsinghua University, which will recruit 10 independent principal investigators by year 2011. This Center will strive to be among the most competitive in the world. Within the Center, Dr. Shi’s own laboratory plans to apply structural biology, biochemical and biophysical approaches to study the structure and function of important integral membrane proteins, to reveal the molecular mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis, and to develop novel therapies against cancer and other debilitating diseases. His laboratory became operational in 2007.
