Professor Qian Jiang, a senior eye expert at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, has moved back to China full time to pursue research on eye transplants.
For more than two decades, Qian built and ran the genetic data hub at Johns Hopkins’ renowned Wilmer Eye Institute. He was welcomed at a ceremony on October 5 at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Hangzhou, part of Zhejiang University, the hospital said.
At the ceremony, Qian said he would also work on “virtual cells” – computer models that mimic real cells so scientists can test how they might respond to drugs or disease without lab experiments.
He said he would draw on the doctors and specialists at Zhejiang University and its hospital to turn lab research into earlier diagnosis and new drugs for patients. He also hopes to bring computer-driven biology and eye medicine closer together.