Our Animal Connection

Dr. Hehenberger is founder and partner of HM NanoMed LLC, Connecticut, USA. He retired after a long career with IBM in the end of 2013.  He earned a Dipl. Ing. in physics from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and obtained his Ph.D. and Dr. Sc. degrees in quantum chemistry from Uppsala University, Sweden. He also spent two years at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, as visiting associate professor. After a few years of materials science research at Sandvik Hard Materials, Stockholm, he joined IBM Sweden, to initiate academic partnerships in computational biology and chemistry, structural engineering, computer networks, and supercomputing. Throughout his IBM career that took him to Paris (IBM Europe), California (Almaden Research, San Jose), and New York, he has led collaborations with academic and global industrial life sciences organizations. His efforts have been documented in about 50 publications and book chapters. His first book, entitled “Nanomedicine: Science, Business, and Impact” was published by Jenny Stanford Publishing in 2015.

Zhi Xia is deputy secretary of the China Science Writers Association, the project manager of the National High Technology Research and Development Program("863" Program) of China, and core member of the Guangdong Provincial Innovation Team. He is also popular science expert of the Chinese Genetics Society. He has published dozens of academic papers in internationally renowned magazines, more than 100 column articles in journals, and 14 books. He got National Publishing Fund Project, and National Outstanding Science Works Award.

Huanming (Henry) Yang is the co-founder and Chairman of Board, BGI, one of the major genomics centers in the world. He and his partners have made a significant contribution to the International HGP, HapMap Project, 1000 Genomes Project, and other human omics research, as well as sequencing and analyzing genomes of many other animals, plants, and microorganisms, with many publications in Science, Nature, Cell and other internationally prestigious journals.He has received many awards and honors, including Research Leader of the Year by Scientific American in 2002 and Award in Biology by the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2006. He was elected as a foreign member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2006, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a fellow of TWAS in 2008, a foreign academician of Indian National Science Academy in 2009, German National Academy of Science in 2012 and the USA National Academy of Science in 2014.