MIT Tehnology Review

Innovators Under 35

IU35
China

The leading global community of innovators, pioneers, and social changemakers in China.

TOM DEASON

A Young Chinese Community of Innovators and Pioneers

Since 1999,  MIT Technology Review has identified young innovators doing exciting work that could shape their fields for decades. Recognizing the rise of Chinese technology talent, the magazine decided to launch a 35 Innovators Under 35 specifically for China in May of 2017. This list is a collaboration between MIT Technology Review in Cambridge and our Chinese partners, TR China. It gathers the young Chinese who could revolutionize our lifestyles and shape the future of technology and industry.

Recognition by MIT Technology Review gives these young people a platform to present themselves and their achievements to industry leaders, academic experts, and the global public. Each year, brilliant technologists are recognized for their advancements in diverse technical fields including biotechnology and medicine, computer and electronics hardware, software, internet, artificial intelligence, robotics, telecommunications, nanotechnology and materials, energy, and transportation, etc.

Meet the emerging innovators of China

Click to discover the winners of 2023

China

Meet the 2023 Innovators Under 35 of China

The 2023 Innovators Under 35 China have been selected by a committee of judges. The honorees come from various backgrounds: researchers from academic institutions, and entrepreneurs from startups and tech giants. What they have in common is that they are developing new projects that will change all areas of society, and they are disrupting our current and future way of living and making the world a better one. The thirty-five innovators are selected from five different categories: entrepreneurs, humanitarian, pioneers, visionaries, and inventors.

Fan BAO

He developed Vidu, a large-scale video generation model with long duration, high consistency, and high dynamism.

Li JING

He made significant contributions to three models, DALL·E 3, Sora, and GPT-4o, laying the foundation for the interaction of AGI in the real world.

Pengcheng CHEN

He developed nanoreactor approaches for combinatorial synthesis and high-throughput study of polyelemental nanomaterials, providing transformative technology for exploring the nanomaterials genome and promoting the application of nanomaterials in catalysis, energy conversion, and other fields.

Yanxiang DENG

He developed novel spatial omics technologies to deeply analyze the key molecular mechanisms affecting cell characteristics and heterogeneity within tissues and organs, providing new perspectives for disease diagnosis and treatment.

Saining XIE

Focusing on exploring visual intelligence, he has developed next-generation infrastructure for visual understanding and generation. Its effectiveness has been validated in models like Sora.

Xiang YUAN

He developed characteristic techniques of strong magnetic field infrared spectroscopy and discovered 1D Weyl Fermion and 3D Quantum Hall effect, achieving important topological quantum breakthroughs in a new spatial dimension.

Xiao XUE

He addressed the three biggest challenges in silicon spin qubits – high fidelities, co-integration, and modular architectures, making silicon-based quantum computing one of the most widely regarded best quantum computing systems in just a few years.

Yanhao DONG

He improved the structural and functional properties and the adaptability to extreme conditions of advanced ceramic materials through innovative ceramic processing science and applications, in order to develop new ceramic materials with high reliability and multifunctionality.

Yaowen HU

He developed the platform of photonic electro-optic coupled-resonators on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), achieving efficient and high-speed electro-optic control of on-chip photons, and providing a new development route for the realization of future photonic-electronic full-integration.

Shanshan LUO

She designed and constructed new-to-nature CO2-fixation pathways and energy conversion modules, creating a new interface between electricity and biological systems, and opening new avenues for electricity-powered carbon fixation, nitrogen fixation, and biosynthesis.

Wei QIN

He developed a chemistry-driven omics technology to map the traffic of biomolecules, providing new ideas for the discovery of disease biomarkers.

Zulipiya SHADIKE

She confirmed that lithium fluoride (LiF) and lithium hydride are the main components of the lithium metal anode interface and established a battery failure model, providing important ideas for the optimization of the lithium metal anode interface and the development of ultra-high specific energy battery systems.

Fei WANG

For the first time, she experimentally demonstrated reliable operations of large-scale computational circuits containing 30 logic gate elements and 30 layers of DNA strand displacement reactions, breaking through the bottleneck of DNA molecular computation in terms of circuit size and depth over the last 20 years.

Qian WANG

She made crucial contributions to the design of vaccine and virus prevention strategy by identifying key amino acid residues on the HIV-1 envelope protein that affect its conformational states, stability, and antigenicity. She also characterized biological functions of SARS-CoV-2 variant spikes, isolated and identified multiple highly efficient neutralizing antibodies against coronavirus, and evaluated antibody responses induced by COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Wang XIANG

Focusing on the forefront of "Trustworthy Graph Foundation Models", he developed multimodal AI-for-Science large models, enabling the large models to reliably understand and generate chemical molecules and proteins, and designed robust preference learning methods to make models better align with human values and behaviors when making predictions or decisions.

Chen WANG

His research bridges five dimensions of fundamental exploration and technical mapping from "mechanism, materials, devices, integration and chips, developing fully adaptable devices based on new materials to efficiently promote breakthroughs in post-Moore's era chips.

Chunyang WANG

He and collaborators developed a super-resolution TEM imaging technique by combining deep learning with atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy. With this novel technique, they revealed new failure mechanisms of layered oxide cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, which were then used to guide the design and development of next-generation cathode materials.

Miao GUI

He clarified the molecular composition of the core skeleton of cilia using cryo-electron microscopy and AI-assisted atomic modeling, building a candidate gene library for cilia-related genetic diseases and guiding clinical molecular diagnosis and disease mechanism research.

Haiwen LUAN

He is devoted to seamlessly connecting living systems and machines through bio-integrated multifunctional microsystems, pioneering the development of technologies that weave intelligent electronic and microfluidic systems into biological ones and promoting biomedical research from multiple dimensions such as drug screening, therapy exploration, and artificial organ growth.

Zhilin YANG

He led a team of experts to apply the ‘scaling laws’ of large models, enhancing model capabilities and popularizing long-context services.

Xiaona LI

She expanded the technical route of the halide system in all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries by developing a new generation of halide solid electrolyte materials and revealing the behavior of solid-phase ion conduction, significantly improving the performance of all-solid-state power battery technology.

Feiran LI

She focused on digital life research, integrating AI and systems biology methods to develop an advanced digital life framework, and applying it to synthetic biology and biomedicine.

Xiaochuan DAI

He developed tissue-scaffold-mimicking bioelectronic sensors that broke the physical barriers between artificial electronics and living tissues, providing a new approach to avoid foreign body effect for implantable brain-machine interfaces.

Ye ZHANG

She developed a series of soft polymer batteries that possess high biocompatibility and high energy density, promoting the application of wearable devices and implantable medical devices.

Youwen ZHUANG

He investigated the interaction mechanisms between opioid drugs and their receptors at multiple levels, providing precise models and innovative approaches for designing safer novel opioid analgesics. His work contributes to addressing the global opioid crisis.

Lin CHANG

He developed world-leading multi-material photonic integration technology, achieving wafer-level mass production of heterogeneously integrated silicon photonic chip, providing solutions to performance bottlenecks in photonic chips for computing, communication, and sensing.

Feng QU

He proposed multidimensional all-speed flux scheme and the aerodynamic optimization technology based on the discrete adjoint method, filling the gap in the aerodynamic optimization design method for high-speed space vehicles.

Shuo FENG

He was the first to reveal the scientific challenge of ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles - the Curse of Rarity. Building on this insight, he then devised a groundbreaking framework that utilizes generative AI to accelerate the testing process and facilitate continuous learning significantly, accelerating simulation and real-world testing speeds by 3 to 5 orders of magnitude.

Li JI

He developed low-cost, low-carbon photovoltaic technologies and green hydrogen production technologies by integrating microelectronic devices with photoelectrochemical water splitting for green hydrogen production, providing new solutions to global energy shortages and climate crises.

Pengcheng CHEN

He developed nanoreactor approaches for combinatorial synthesis and high-throughput study of polyelemental nanomaterials, providing transformative technology for exploring the nanomaterials genome and promoting the application of nanomaterials in catalysis, energy conversion, and other fields.

Yang LIU

He and colleagues developed the world's first high-power erbium-doped waveguide amplifier using silicon-based photonic integrated circuits, providing a crucial foundation for on-chip low-noise lasers, miniaturized photonic Radars, large-scale on-chip photonic meshes, and quantum photonics.

Xiaodong LIU

In-depth analysis of key molecular mechanisms in cell fate regulation during cellular reprogramming and development of regenerative medicine cell therapies for treating Parkinson's disease and other conditions.

Wenzhu LIU

He developed a mass fabrication technology for flexible monocrystalline silicon solar cells that can bend over 360 degrees, providing key support for the industrialization of flexible silicon-based photovoltaics and national strategic applications.

Xianbiao FU

He achieved a continuous electrosynthesis of ammonia from N2 reduction and H2 oxidation at ambient pressure and temperatures, setting a record high ammonia faradaic efficiency of up to 61% and for the first time realized a new pathway for calcium-mediated green ammonia synthesis.

Yating WAN

She developed novel silicon-based quantum dot optoelectronic technology that addresses the core light source problem of silicon photonic integration and offers advantages such as high insensitivity to dislocation defects, low threshold current density, and high operational temperature, providing high-performance and highly integrated solutions for high-speed large-capacity optical communication, optical computing, and quantum communication.

Judges of 2023

Our judges are worldwide experts from leading universities and companies to help us select the 35 best Innovators of 2023

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