Li Jiayang

Li Jiayang is a Chinese agronomist and geneticist. He is Vice Minister of Agriculture in China and President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He is also Professor and Principal investigator at the Institute of Genetics and Development at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Education

Li was educated at Anhui Agricultural University in China where he was award a Bachelor's degree in Agronomy in 1982. He continued his education in the United States where he was awarded a PhD in 1991 from Brandeis University for his research into the enzymes involved in the reduction of sulfate in the single-celled organism Euglena.

Career

Following his PhD, Li completed postdoctoral research with Robert L. Last at Cornell University. He has been Professor of plant molecular genetics at the Institute of Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1994.

Awards and honours

Li was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2015. His nomination reads:
Li was also elected a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001, a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2004, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the US in 2011, a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2012, and a Foreign Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2013. In both 2016 and 2019, he became a laureate of the Asian Scientist 100 by the Asian Scientist.