NIH-awarded life scientist Shu Xiaokun abruptly shifts research from US to China

Eminent life scientist Shu Xiaokun has received numerous awards and significant funding from the US government over the past two decades.Earlier this year, he was appointed the prestigious Herfindahl Endowed Chair professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), capping a career that included pioneering fluorescent protein tools in Nobel laureate Roger Yonchien Tsien’s laboratory.The motto of Shu’s lab is a quote from the Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman: “If you’re not having fun, you are not learning. There’s a pleasure in finding things out.”He is bringing that curiosity back to China.According to the Fudan University website, Shu has relocated to Shanghai.As a distinguished professor in Fudan, he will serve as the founding director of the Institute of Chemical and Open Biotechnology Research and Application.