The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced on December 7, 2015, the induction of 61 Chinese and 12 foreign scholars as members into the Academic Divisions of CAS. Prof. Song Weibo, a famous protozoologist and professor at Ocean University of China was enlisted as a new member of the Division of Life Sciences and Medical Sciences. OUC now boasts 10 academicians as members of CAS and CAE.
Prof. Song is from Suining County, Jiangsu and was born in Weishan County, Shandong in December, 1958. He was admitted to the department of fisheries at Shandong College of Oceanography (former OUC). He proceeded to earn his master's degree where he focused on the research of pathology of ciliate under the guidance of zoologists Yin Zuofang and Meng Qingxian from 1982 to 1985. He began working at the college in 1985 and the following year attended the University of Bonn on a government scholarship where he pursued his doctorate degree under the instruction of the renowned protozoologist Norbert Wilbert. His dissertation was published in an academic journal of collected papers and aroused wide attention and recognition.
Prof. Song returned to China in 1989 and established a protozoology laboratory for research on taxonomy of sea ciliate, cytology and systematics which extended to include the fields of ecology and pathology. Through 30 years of work on ciliate, Prof. Song and his team concluded their research on the taxology and flora of ciliate of coastal areas and Antarctica, and made breakthroughs in the biodiversity studies of ciliate in the East Pacific Ocean and the East Asia Sea. This research contributed to the progress and development of ciliate research of the oceans and seas across the globe. With his team, Prof. Song dedicated his research to the cytogenesis of important monoids like gastrotricha, and newly discovered the behavior of cell differentiation and dedifferentiation of large quantities of cells, thus, establishing for the first time the mode of ontogenesis of representative species such as kitrichidae. This represents key achievements in the past 20 years for cell differentiation and mode construction. Furthermore, Song led the systemic exploration of ciliophora and the sequencing of the marker gene in the field of molecular phylogeny of ciliate while establishing the largest DNA bank for all species groups. This bank has become a significant archive for the international research of ciliate taxonomy, systematics and genomics. In addition to these achievements, Song initiates and leads many international cooperation programs with foreign experts and produces fruitful results. Thanks to his efforts, China has emerged as one of the key centers for the research of global ciliatology. Prof. Song is a ground-breaker who makes great contributions to the research of protozoology while amplifying China’s influence in this field greatly.
Through the years, Prof. Song has worked assiduously and devoted himself to the cultivation of his students and the development of the discipline. He has fostered more than 50 graduates, including members and winners of the “One-hundred Talent Program” of CAS, the Program for New Century Excellent Talents of the Ministry of Education, the Corliss Prize for Ciliatology, and the National Excellent Doctorial Dissertation. In addition, 12 of Prof. Song's graduates were winners of the Shandong Excellent Doctorial Dissertation. Of nearly 30 ciliatology research teams now in China, two-thirds of them have laboratories that were established and presided over by his former students. Song's work greatly boosts the growth of the protozoology discipline in China.
In 2010, he designed and established the Institute of Marine Biodiversity and Evolution in OUC which, in just several years, has ameliorated the landscape of the discipline of “The Great Biology” at the university while holding the leading and facilitating role in the fields of developmental biology and biodiversity.
Prof. Song enjoys high prestige throughout the world for his work in protozoology and has won the top prize for protozoology twice. He was elected as one of five standing committee members of the International Protozoology Biologists Association, the President of Asia Protozoology Association, and President of the Chinese Protozoological Society which is a subbranch of the China Zoological Society. Furthermore, Prof. Song was invited onto the board of editors for core journals such as Eucaryotic Microbes Journal, Europe Protistology Journal and Systematics and Biodiversity.
Translated by Stevey WANG
Proofread by S.O. McKiernan and William ZOU
