17 April, two professors were among more than 200 global leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts, to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), one of the world’s most prestigious honors in academics.

 

Guoping Feng, is now an elected member of the Department of Neurosciences, Cognitive Sciences and Behavioral Biology of AAAS.

 

Guoping Feng, an MIT professor who is also a lecture professor under the Zijiang Scholars Program of ECNU, became an elected member of the Department of Neurosciences, Cognitive Sciences and Behavioral Biology of AAAS. Jinquan Yu, a student of 1982 class of ECNU, who is now an honorary professor of the university, is the only organic chemist elected to the Department of the Mathematical Sciences of the U.S. academy.

Feng is a Chinese-American neuroscientist. He is now the Poitras Professor of Neurosciences in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is devoted to understanding molecular mechanisms regulating neuron-to-neuron communications and how defects in neuronal communication contribute to psychiatric disorders. His lab combines cutting-edge technologies and multidisciplinary approaches to unravel the neurobiological mechanisms of autism, OCD and schizophrenia. He was hired as a lecture professor under the Zijiang Scholars Program of ECNU in 2011.

 

ECNU alumnus Yu Jinquan is elected into Department of the Mathematical Sciences of the U.S. academy.

 

Born in 1966, Yu obtained a bachelor's degree at ECNU in 1987. In 2016, he received a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a genius grant. He is the most well-known scholar of Chinese origin in the community of asymmetric C-H functionalization research and resulting pharmaceutical applications. He is known globally for his groundbreaking work in the field of organic synthetic chemistry, having developed new strategies and tools for making molecules used for medicine and other applications.

Yu and U.S. organic chemist Phil S. Baran, a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, were invited to deliver a report on their academic research and findings at ECNU on September 26, 2017, and were conferred the Honorary Professor title by ECNU University Council chairman Tong Shijun.

 

Professor Yu was invited to ECNU for an academic presentation in 2007.

 

One of the oldest and most prestigious learned societies in the United States, AAAS is also a leading center for independent policy research.