Wang Jian (geneticist)

Wang Jian (born 13 April 1954) is a Chinese geneticist and businessman. He is Chairman and co-founder of the BGI Genomics (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute).[1]

Education

He graduated in 1979 from Hunan Medical College and in 1986 graduated with a Master's in Integrated Medicines from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. From 1988 to 1994, he was a research fellow at the University of Texas, the University of Iowa and the University of Washington, working on cell proliferation and differentiation.

Career

After returning to China in 1994 to set up Jubilee Biotechnology, this provided much of the initial capital used to set up the Beijing Genomics Institute with Yang Huanming, Liu Siqi and Yu Jun in 1999 in order to engage in research contributing to the Human Genome Project.[2] After this work he was involved in the sequencing of the rice genome,[3] first Asian human reference genome[4] and numerous other large-scale genomics projects. In 2003, he was involved in the efforts to sequence and contain the SARS coronavirus,[5] meeting with former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Jintao who praised BGI's contribution.[6] In 2007, the Beijing Genomics Institute become just BGI when it was relocated to Shenzhen as "the first citizen-managed, non-profit research institution in China".