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Prof. Xie Zuowei, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), has been elected a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in recognition of his remarkable contributions in the field of organic chemistry.  There are 157 candidates this year, of which 25 are scholars in chemistry.  With his great achievements in organometallic chemistry, Professor Xie stands out from the crowd and received the honour.

Prof. Xie said, “I am very honoured to have been elected as a CAS Member. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my nominators, students, post-doctoral fellows, working partners and all my colleagues and friends who have been supporting me all along.”

Prof. Xie received his BSc degree from Hangzhou University; MSc degree from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and his PhD degree, working in a joint programme between Technische Universitӓt Berlin and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was then employed as a research associate in the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, and afterwards as post-doctoral fellow in the University of Southern California.   Prof. Xie joined CUHK in 1995 and was appointed as Professor of Chemistry in 2006.  In 2013, he was appointed as Choh-Ming Li Professor of Chemistry.

Widely recognised as an academic giant in the world, Prof. Xie’s research interests lie in the fields of organometallic chemistry of f- and d-block transition metal complexes, the chemistry of boron clusters, carboranes, supercarboranes and metallacarboranes, homogenous catalysis and small molecule activation.  He has published widely with over 270 research papers.  Prof.  Xie has also successfully motivated and nurtured numerous inquisitive young scientists over the years.  As a distinguished scholar, Prof. Xie has yielded fruitful research results and has been awarded numerous honours, such as the Chinese Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Young Chemist, the Natural Science Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (first-class), the State Natural Science Prize (third class), The Young Researcher Award, The Croucher Senior Research Fellowship, the CUHK Research Excellence Award, the State National Science Prize (second-class) and the Chinese Chemical Society Yao-Zeng Huang Award in Organometallic Chemistry.

CAS Members are elected by all current CAS Members with voting rights. Researchers, professors or scholars of similar ranking or specialists of Chinese nationality with outstanding and innovative achievement in the scientific sector can be nominated and elected as a CAS Member. The election of Members is held bi-annually.  Currently there are 7 CAS Members in CUHK, including Prof. Henry Wong, Prof.  Chi Wu and Prof. Thomas Mak.