Biologist 'beauty' heads home

Renowned molecular biologist Nieng Yan, 45, is going home. She quit her teaching job at Princeton University.

The Shenzhen municipal government says the academy will be built in Pingshan District. It aims to become a world-renowned medical research institution by 2050.

Yan, born in Zhangqiu District, Shandong Province, graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree in 2000 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 2004.

From 2005 to 2007, she worked as a researcher in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton. In 2007, at the age of 30, Yan was appointed a professor and doctoral tutor at Tsinghua.

Yan, who specializes in the research of important membrane transport proteins, voltage-gated ion channels and cholesterol metabolism pathways, earned the moniker of "beautiful scientist."