华人生物学家协会（CBIS）www.cbisociety.org
华人生物学家协会成立于1998年，主要成员是自上世纪80年代起从中国大陆赴美留学获博士学位、在北美大学或研究机构任助理教授以上职位的华裔生物学者以及在工业界做到项目领导以上的华人。该协会最初命名为“吴瑞协会”，以表彰康奈尔大学教授吴瑞在促进中美生命科学交流中作出的杰出贡献。
改革开放初期，当邓小平提出扩大派遣留学生的想法后，吴瑞立即向中国教育部建议：世界生命科学领域发展很快，中国要尽快培养这一领域的年轻科技人才。为此，他向美国数十所一流大学介绍中国的改革开放，并说服它们接受中国留学生，最终促成了 CUSBEA项目，也就是常说的“吴瑞项目”的实施。项目自1981年连续8年共派出425人，如今这些人中的很多已成为当今世界生命科学领域的顶尖专家，为促进我国基因工程和生物技术的发展起了重要作用。
吴瑞协会在华人生物学家中的影响越来越广泛，并于2004年更名为华人生物学家协会，成为代表北美等地区3000多位华裔生物学精英的专业组织。很多著名华裔生物学家，如美国科学院院士王晓东、美国文理科学院院士袁钧英、霍华德休斯医学研究院研究员许田、耶鲁大学干细胞项目主任林海帆、哈佛大学医学院教授施杨等，都曾在协会理事会任职。
The Chinese Biological Investigators Society (CBIS), previously known as the Ray Wu Society, is a not-for-profit professional organization of life sciences. The Society primarily comprises life scientists of Chinese origin and requires membership qualification at or above certain level of career development. The mission of the CBI Society is to promote advancement of the frontiers in life sciences by providing Chinese and their peers of other nationalities with a platform of professional interactions and collaborations. The society is also committed to facilitating the development of life sciences in China.
History of the Chinese Biological Investigator Society
Dr. Ray Wu's contribution and leadership
The Chinese Biological Investigator Society is formerly known as Ray Wu Society, in honoring Dr. Ray Wu's significant contributions in the advancement of Biochemistry and Plant Biotechnology, as well as his outstanding leadership in developing the Sino-America overseas student program. In the early 80s, Dr. Wu initiated and organized a well-known and highly successful Chinese overseas student program -- CUSBEA (China-United States Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Examination and Administration). This program, which selected gifted young Chinese students through intensified screening examinations, operated 8 years (1982-1989) and provided the US with a total of about 400 students. The majority of them later, through their professional developments, made great career achievements and outstanding contributions to the progress of the life sciences. In the past, the CUSBEA program also acted as one of the major autogenous professional platforms for biologists from China to communicate and interact in the States, as well as internationally.
When East Meets West (pdf)
When East Meets West
A Brief History of the CUSBEA and CUSBA Programs
American missionaries, teachers, and doctors who visited China in the early 1800s opened the path for Chinese students to enter the United States for a Western education. The first known Chinese students were Yung Wing and two other young men who came to Monson Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, in 1846. Yung Wing, who eventually enrolled at Yale University, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1854. He then returned to China and convinced the Chinese government to send students to the West to be “thoroughly educated for the Chinese Public Service.” In 1872, he established the Chinese Educational Mission, in Hartford, Conneticut, and over the next four years brought about 120 students to the United States.
The influx of Chinese students to the United States has fluctuated over the years, influenced largely by internal and international political events, such as the overthrow of the Ching dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the establishment of the People’s of Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and the diplomatic recognition of the PRC by the United States in 1976. Professor Hsien Wu was among the earlier U.S.-trained Chinese students in biology. He developed the Folin-Wu method for blood analysis in 1919, returned to The Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, and established the first department of biochemistry in China.
Following normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, thousands of Chinese students wanted to come to the United States for advanced education and training. A major challenge, though, was that the U.S. universities had difficulty in comparing American and Chinese applicants and selecting the most qualified, since the GRE [Graduate Record Examination] and TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] exams were not available for Chinese applicants.
To overcome this challenge, in 1981 Professor Ray Wu at Cornell University initiated the China-U.S. Biochemistry Examination and Application (CUSBEA) program with the goal of recommending qualified students in the areas of biological sciences to be educated in the U.S. The Chinese Ministry of Education, which sponsored the CUSBEA program in China, delegated coordination of the program to the biology department at Peking University. Professor Wu served as the U.S.coordinator, and he began to contact anumber of major U.S. universities. Within only a year, approximately 50 universities had agreed to participate, a number that nearly doubled to almost 90 over the next seven years.
Until 1989, the last year of the program, 425 Chinese students came to the United States through the CUSBEA program. By 1984, due to its success, even those students who applied for admission on their own benefited from the reputation of the students admitted under the aegis of the CUSBEA program.
Even though the CUSBEA program ceased operations more than 15 years ago, the Chinese applicant pool has continued to increase. In the biological and biomedical sciences, many U.S. colleges were receiving far more applications each year than they could accommodate, creating a serious logistical burden in the handling, responding, and filing of applications. And, without the CUSBEA program, it was again difficult to evaluate the qualifications of the Chinese applicants.
Robert Yu, who was chair of the department of biochemistry at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond from the late 1980s until 2000, first brought this issue to the attention of the Association of Medical and Graduate Departments of Biochemistry (AMGDB) at its 1994 annual meeting. Many of the AMGDB attendees that year believed it would be advantageous to establish a mechanism to assist U.S. institutions in evaluating the credentials of Chinese applicants. Based on our previous experience with the CUSBEA program, we believed that a face-to-face interview by an experienced interviewer was the most efficient and cost effecmerican tive mechanism for conducting the selection process.
After additional discussions among several prominent educators in the biomedical sciences in the United States and China and with the support of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA), we formally initiated the China-United States Biochemistry Admissions (CUSBA) Program in 1995. Our purpose was then, and still is, to provide coordination services in graduate admissions from Chinese students to U.S. departments of biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, and related fields. Since its inception over a decade ago, more than 50 departments and programs in the United States and Canada have participated in and sought assistance from the CUSBA program, which to date has interviewed nearly 2,000 applicants.
As of this writing, most of the CUSBEA alumni/alumnae have completed their academic training and have been doing excellent and important research. All together, more than 1,000 well-trained and talented Chinese scientists are active in the areas of biochemistry, molecular biology and biotechnology as a result of the CUSBEA program, constituting a “reservoir of talent” in the United States. Because of its relatively short history, the number of students who have completed the CUSBA program is not yet available.
Robert Yu and Ray Wu serve as the coordinators of the CUSBA program. The U.S. coordination office is currently located at the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA, 30912 (tel. 706-721-0699, fax 706-721-8727, E-mail: ryu@mcg.edu).
The liaison office in Beijing is chaired by Dr. Zeng-Yi Chang (a former CUSBEA graduate), professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, at Peking University, and the liaison office is located at the School of Life Sciences, Rm. 204, New Life Sciences Building, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; tel.: 86-10-6275-8822; fax: 86-10-6275-1526; email: changzy@pku.edu.cn.
We are fortunate that Professor Xiaocheng Gu, who participated in the founding of the CUSBEA program, continues to act as a consultant. Drs. David Allmann and Richard Haak (Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis) served as group leaders of the team who conduct the onsite interviews. We usually invite 4–5 interviewers each year from participating universities. It should be noted that the CUSBA program is a nonprofit consortium for the sole purpose of providing the coordination services in graduate admissions from China to U.S. and Canadian universities.
In conclusion, both the CUSBEA and the CUSBA programs have provided a vital service to U.S. educational institutions, achieving the recruitment and training of a large number of outstanding Chinese students in biological sciences, many of whom have become leaders in the biomedical and life sciences. Nine are Investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and many others have become professors and achieved recognition from prestigious academic institutions. A former CUSBEA student, Professor Xiaodong Wang of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has become a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Even though the majority of these scientists have remained in the United States, many of them have become increasingly active in helping China to develop life sciences. Those who have returned to China have made important contributions in science, engineering, education, and government service there, and, importantly, have taken an active role in the modernization of China. With the globalization of science, we will certainly witness more mixing and exchange ahead with China and other countries.
*Contributed by Dr. Robert Yu, Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and Institute of Neuroscience,Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA 30912, and Dr. Ray Wu, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853
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Formation of the Society
Despite the professional development of the CUSBEA students and growth of other Chinese overseas biologists who also made great successes in their career development, it became obvious that there was a strong unmet need to further expand and formalize a powerful platform from which more effective interactions and collaborations, among advanced Chinese life-science professionals of either academics or industries, could stem. In the fall of 1997, Dr. Chris Tan, the head of the Molecular Biology Institute in Singapore, proposed to set up a fund in Dr. Ray Wu's name to recognize his contributions to the academic exchange between China and the US. A quick positive response was reflected from American Chinese scholars with a further proposal to form a professional society. This initiative spread rapidly and widely throughout the existing networks of Chinese life-science professionals. In January of 1998, with the participation of Dr. Ray Wu and high-level delegates from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and American Chinese Embassy, more than 100 PI/PLs representing the new generation of Chinese biologists got together at UCLA to form the Ray Wu Society. The conference was very successful and included an outstanding symposium with panel discussions of advanced life science topics and an election of the officers and executives for CBI Society.
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Significance and potential impact of CBI Society
The significance of CBI Society is not only demonstrated by the uniqueness of its organization and mission, but is also reflected by the inclusion of outstanding scientists who are leaders in diversified fields. It is well known that Chinese scientists are generally diligent and productive. They serve as indispensable work forces in the development of life sciences and biotechnology in both academic and industry settings. This is evident from their authorship in top-rated journals and recognition and frequent appearances at premier scientific meetings. Tightly connected with the Chinese overseas scholars and with the rich human-resource pool in China, CBI Society will play a critical role in organizing and promoting professional interactions and collaborations among Chinese scholars, at home and overseas, together with their American and international colleagues.
CBI Society began in January 1998. The outcomes of the activities of CBI Society and its long-term proactive impact on the advancements of the life sciences can not be over-estimated. CBI Society stems from a solid base of successes in fostering young scientists and of significant contributions to science and biotechnology. CBI Society will grow steadily and operate productively to live up to its great expectations.