My initial response to receiving a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship through the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative (CAS PIFI) was pleasure and satisfaction. I was happy when I moved to China and could continue my stay with the CAS PIFI. My experience as a postdoctoral researcher has expanded my network of contacts, and for that, I am profoundly grateful.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable and productive two-year post-doctorate research position at the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry (SKLEG) of the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGCAS). My accommodation at a furnished residential house of the IGCAS was very comfortable for a long-term stay in Guiyang. My environmental research laboratory was also located very close to my residential house. Guiyang has become my second home. IGCAS is one of the world’s foremost research institutes in the fields of environmental geochemistry, ore deposit geochemistry, lunar and planetary sciences, and the study of the high temperature and high-pressure earth’s interior.

Moving from Pakistan to China was an exciting time for me. Although I have experience traveling and living abroad, it is always exciting to move to a new place, experience a new culture, and make new friends. Living in China is very different from living in Pakistan, not only because of the size and population of the country but also because of the culture, which made living in China so exciting. Visiting ancient cultural heritage sites like the Forbidden City was wonderful. The hospitality of the people and the culture of sharing a meal is something that I cherish. There are still so many different places to see, foods to eat, and characters to learn.

I contacted Professor Feng Xinbin for a postdoctoral researcher position because of his outstanding science and his international collaborations. Therefore, I had the privilege to land in an international-minded group that accepted me and helped me out in many different ways. I am so lucky that my colleagues became my friends and I could work with them for two years. In addition to the international consortium, in which I started working for IGCAS, different professors from all around the world would come and visit. International collaboration is something I love in my job as a scientist; people from different cultures and backgrounds make work more interesting and the diversity is good for creativity and development within science. Therefore, I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work together with Professor Feng; being part of a high-standing international collaboration such as the IGCAS was a huge privilege. My host, Professor Feng, spared no effort to ensure that my two years’ stay in Guiyang was both productive and comfortable.

I believe working at the IGCAS in the coming years will improve my scientific work and cultural awareness. While I will learn a lot from my Chinese colleagues about science and Chinese culture, I hope that I can also teach them something. I am very happy to have received the CAS PIFI fellowship to continue working within IGCAS in China and contribute in the field of ecological studies. The CAS PIFI fellowship is a great step in my career as a postdoctoral researcher, and I hope that in the future, wherever I will go, collaborations with CAS will be possible.

From 2019 to 2021, I was the Resident Representative in Guiyang, during which time I interacted frequently with my CAS counterparts. Now, I am pleased to see that CAS’s unwavering commitment to the development of China’s global research profile has continued unabated, in part through continued well-supported collaborations with the international scholarly community. The PIFI program is a clear indication of China’s rising stature in 21st-century science.

Finally, I want to thank CAS for creating the PIFI program and affording me this most-welcome opportunity to further strengthen and expand my longstanding scholarly ties with the IGCAS. I look forward to furthering and expanding my research ties with CAS through the IGCAS in the future. My PIFI visit has established solid foundations for multiple lines of collaborative research.

Source: Jamshed Ali,

Institute of Geochemistry,

Chinese Academy of Sciences