On March 24, the International Metabolic Engineering Society (IMES) granted its 2023 International Metabolic Engineering Award to Chen Guoqiang, director of Tsinghua's Center of Synthetic and Systems Biology. Chen, a professor at the university's School of Life Sciences, is honored for his contributions to the development of Next Generation Industrial Biotechnology (NGIB) based on extremophiles for unsterile and continuous production of biochemicals.

The award, presented every two years by the IMES, a community within the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE’s) Society for Biological Engineering, recognizes an outstanding researcher in the field of metabolic engineering.

The IMES is dedicated to advancing metabolic engineering as a complementary science for the biological production of materials, pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, chemicals, and fuels. A lecture by Chen on the latest advances of NGIB in biomanufacturing will be presented during the IMES-sponsored Metabolic Engineering 15 conference from June 11 to 15 in Singapore.

Professor Chen made the history by becoming the first Chinese scientist to be awarded since the inception of IMES Award in 2000.

Editor：Li Han