Encouraging

Yan Ning, a prominent biologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, has accepted a job offer at Princeton in the US. Her decision has garnered attention because she was previously unable to get research funds from the government-run National Sciences Foundation and described the frustration of the grant process in detail on her blog. Many netizens criticized the system for its failure to support talent, but some called her selfish for moving to a foreign country. Shang Yong, secretary of the Party Group of China Association for Science and Technology, noted that top academic talent switches between universities all the time, and helps build better academic exchanges. Yan’s case shows that Chinese science and technology is being gradually recognized by international academia and the exchange of personnel will be normal in the future, Shang added.