Distinguished biologist Wang Cunyu has left the University of California, Los Angeles and joined Peking University to head its Institute of Advanced Clinical Medicine (IACM).
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Wang – who left China in 1990 and has been in the United States for more than three decades – delivered a speech as the institute’s newly appointed head at a conference last week to mark the body’s anniversary on December 18, the Peking University Health Science Centre said on Friday.
Wang was quoted as saying that it was his great honour and responsibility to return to his alma mater and develop the institute.
He said he would lead the team to “take root in clinical needs, make full use of the unique advantages of cross-disciplines and bridge the gap between basic research and clinical application”, and would devote himself to building the institute into a major force in global medical innovation.
Previously, Wang was a professor and associate dean for graduate studies at the UCLA school of dentistry, and the first person to hold the school’s Dr No-Hee Park Endowed Chair in Dentistry. He is also a professor in the department of bioengineering and a member of the university’s cancer centre.
According to the UCLA’s website, his research focuses on three areas related to human health and medicine. These include molecular signalling, epigenetics – the study of how behaviour and environment can affect gene activity – and therapeutics of oral, head and neck cancer.
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Wang was born in 1963 in Xinghua in eastern China’s Jiangsu province. He studied at Nanjing Medical University and Peking University’s school of dentistry, where he obtained his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in 1985 and 1989 respectively.