Full of contrasts! The post-90s "blonde doctoral supervisor" who became popular with fashion won a million-dollar award!

What is your impression of a doctoral supervisor?

Recently, Alibaba's "Damo Academy Young Orange Award" (hereinafter referred to as the "Young Orange Award") announced the list of winners in 2023. Each winner will receive a 1 million yuan bonus supported by Alibaba's public welfare project and can be used at will. Among the 15 young scientists who won the Young Orange Award this year, there is a doctoral supervisor who became famous for dyeing his hair blonde. He is Su Jun, a young researcher currently working at the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences (hereinafter referred to as "BILS").

Su Jun, winner of the Damo Academy Young Orange Award, is from Hong Kong, China

Su Jun, 29 years old this year, is different from many people's impression of doctoral supervisors and scientists. As an "INTJ" (architect-type personality), he loves to dye his hair. On social media, he uses a blonde avatar and is teased by netizens as "looking like Director Tony". In fact, he has not only dyed his hair blonde, but also other colors. He is not angry about the netizens' teasing. He said: "It's quite fun, and it makes everyone feel that people who do scientific research can also be interesting."

Dancing with Life

After becoming an internet celebrity, Su Jun hopes that the public will not only focus on him, but also on the field he is researching, which is women's reproductive health.

Over the past 20 years, China's infertility rate has increased from 3% to about 20%, which means that one in five couples faces fertility problems. He said: "Only when enough people and institutions recognize the importance of this field can we jointly promote the development of this field."

The original motivation that drove Su Jun to enter this field came from his mother.

According to Su Jun's recollection, his mother was an elderly mother. Although he was lucky to have grown up healthy, he was still concerned about the risks associated with female reproduction. In his research in this field, Su Jun mainly started from the source of life for every person on earth - the egg, and carried out a series of scientific research explorations.

Generally speaking, a newborn girl has 1 million to 2 million eggs, and there are about 300,000 eggs in the ovaries before puberty, but only about 400 to 500 eggs can mature and ovulate normally. Among them, 20% to 40% of human eggs will have too many or too few chromosomes.

So what impact will too many or too few chromosomes have on female reproduction?

Usually, eggs with abnormal chromosome numbers will produce abnormal embryos after fertilization, leading to female infertility, miscarriage or genetic diseases such as Down syndrome. Su Jun's research is dedicated to solving the root cause of abnormal chromosome numbers in human eggs - oocytes.

Oocytes are one of the longest-lived cells in the human body. Their proteins are renewed slowly, and many conventional methods cannot remove the proteins synthesized and accumulated during early development in a short period of time.

Under the microscope, labeled oocytes

Over the years, Su Jun's team has innovated and pioneered in this field, successfully revealing the molecular mechanism by which human eggs often missegregate chromosomes, and proposed the first prevention and treatment plan to increase the accuracy of human oocyte spindle assembly and chromosome separation, bringing new ideas to solving female infertility and other fertility problems.

With this scientific research contribution, he successfully won the Otto Hahn Award from the Max Planck Society of Germany, and became one of the Chinese candidates for the "35 Innovators Under 35 Years Old" of MIT Technology Review in 2022.

Su Jun, China's winner of the 2022 MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35"

Challenge the unpopular and the unknown

Perhaps you would think that such an outstanding young scholar must have been very talented since childhood!

Actually, this is not the case. In junior high school, Su Jun often failed science exams (equivalent to comprehensive science in mainland middle schools) because of his poor physics grades. Therefore, his teachers did not recommend him to continue studying science in high school. Su Jun's parents are both businessmen, and they also hope that their son can go into business or work in a relatively stable career path such as medicine.

Just when Su Jun was confused, an internship opportunity in his second year of high school became a turning point in his life.

At that time, his later undergraduate mentor gave him an opportunity to intern in a laboratory during the summer. It was during this internship that Su Jun developed a strong interest in biology, and he decided to study biology.

After the college entrance examination results were announced, Su Jun secretly changed his major from medicine to cell and molecular biology at the School of Life Sciences of the Chinese University of Hong Kong without his parents' knowledge. He laughed and said that he felt that he would have to rely on himself to pay for the tuition for four years of university.

During his undergraduate studies, Su Jun began to engage in scientific research, and used his winter and summer vacations to study in laboratories at different universities, including Fudan University in Shanghai, Harvard University, and the National University of Singapore. After graduating from undergraduate studies, he was admitted to the University of Göttingen in Germany to pursue a doctorate degree with his rich scientific research resume and experience. After graduating with a doctorate, he completed his postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Years of scientific research and study at home and abroad have made him a rising star in the field of female reproductive research.

In 2022, Su Jun returned to China after completing his postdoctoral career. After repeated consideration, he decided to go to the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences. "I joined the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences as a researcher because of the influence of a postdoctoral fellow. He is a doctoral graduate of the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences. He told me that the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences is very tolerant of carrying out some forward-looking and groundbreaking projects, and can provide me with a very good scientific research and growth environment." Su Jun said.

In addition, what makes Su Jun even more excited is that the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences will build a mature equipment that is only one in the world - a light sheet microscope, which plays a key role in his research.

Why is microscopic imaging so important? Su Jun explained that whether studying abnormalities in the number of chromosomes in egg cells or early embryonic development, a lot of microscopic imaging work is required. It is difficult for traditional microscopes to take layered photos without destroying the structure, but light sheet microscopes can do it.

Su Jun's laboratory

Today, Su Jun still maintains a work schedule of 8 am to 8 pm, and insists on spending 12 hours a day in the laboratory. His previous research direction was abnormal chromosome numbers in egg cells, and his current research direction is early embryonic development arrest. When asked about his thoughts on winning the Green Orange Award, his answer was simple: "After receiving the Green Orange Award prize, I still plan to add another microscope to the laboratory."