Dr. Liu Chak Wan, Chancellor of Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), has appointed Chair Professor Jian-Kang Zhu to assume the position of Vice-Chancellor and President with effect from January 2026.

President-Designate Chair Professor Jian-Kang Zhu is a world-renowned molecular geneticist and plant biologist, as well as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In the 2024 “World’s Top Scientists Ranking” released by Elsevier, he ranked first globally in the field of life sciences, fully demonstrating his exceptional academic accomplishments and worldwide influence.

Chair Professor Jian-Kang Zhu earned his Ph.D. in plant physiology from Purdue University in the United States in 1993. He joined the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at Auburn University in 1994 and was appointed to the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona in 1996, where he was promoted to professor in 2000. In 2004, he became the Director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside, and was appointed the Presidential Chair Professor and subsequently Jane Johnson Chair Professor. In 2009, he served as the Director of the Plant Stress Genomics Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. In 2010, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. That same year, he was appointed Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue University. In 2011, he became the founding Director and Chief Scientist of the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 2022, he has been working full-time at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) as a Chair Professor in the School of Medicine, founding Director of the Institute of Advanced Biotechnology, Director of the Key Laboratory of Gene Editing Innovation (Hainan) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Vice Chair of the Academic Committee of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Chairman of the Shenzhen Cell and Gene Industry Alliance.

Chair Professor Jian-Kang Zhu has made outstanding academic contributions, primarily focusing on the development and application of novel gene editing technologies (plant and animal breeding, cell and gene therapy), epigenetics (DNA methylation and demethylation), plant stress biology (molecular mechanisms of plant resistance to environmental stresses such as drought, salinity, and low temperature), and the development of novel biostimulants. He has been a leading scientist in these fields. He serves as the co-editor-in-chief of Stress Biology, The Innovation Life, and Oral Science and Homeostatic Medicine, and as an editorial board member for National Science Review and Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. He is also a member of the editorial advisory board for The Innovation, Research, Molecular Plant, Plant Communication, and Horticulture Research. He has published a series of foundational papers in top international journals, with over 186,000 total citations and an h-index of 204. He has been consistently included in the list of “Highly Cited Scientists” globally and is one of the most highly cited scientists in the natural sciences worldwide. In the 2024 “World's Top Scientists Ranking” released by Elsevier, he ranked 46th globally in the overall annual influence across all disciplines and first in the field of biological sicences.

The University is confident that under the leadership of Chair Professor Jian-Kang Zhu, leveraging his profound academic expertise, broad international vision, and exceptional leadership, he will progressively enhance the disciplinary system in life science and health fields such as gene editing and synthetic biology, functional food and drug innovation, accelerate the incubation and transformation of the University’s scientific research achievements, advance the University’s internationalization process, deepen collaboration with higher education institutions in the Greater Bay Area, actively integrate into and contribute to the national development, inject strong momentum into higher education and technological innovation in Macao, and embark on a new chapter of high-quality development for the University.