Dr. Bai Chunli, president of Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), was elected a member of Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe), at an academy meeting on June 26 in London.

The Academia Europaea is a functioning European Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences, composed of individual members. Membership is by invitation. Invitations are made only after peer group nomination, scrutiny and confirmation as to the scholarship and eminence of the individual in their chosen field.

Prof. Bai graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Peking University in 1978 and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the CAS Institute of Chemistry in 1981 and 1985 respectively. His research areas include the structure and properties of polymer catalysts, X-ray crystallography of organic compounds, molecular mechanics and EXAFS research on electro-conducting polymers. In the mid-1980s, he shifted his research to the fields of scanning tunneling microscopy and molecular nanotechnology.

He is also president of the Presidium of the Academic Divisions of CAS, and the president of the World Academy of Sciences for the Advancement of Science in Developing Countries (TWAS).

Members of Academia Europaea are drawn from across the whole European continent, not only western Europe. Members also include European scholars who are resident in other regions of the world. Current membership stands at around 2,800. Among them are 52 Nobel Laureates, several of whom were elected to the Academia before they received the prize.