The Ray Wu Society for Life Sciences

The Ray Wu Society for Life Sciences (RWS) is a non-profit professional society of Chinese-American and Chinese life scientists with the goal to promote scientific communication among the scientists between USA and China and the life science research in China. The members of the RWS, now numbered more than 300, are a group of elite biologists who have reached the level of assistant professor or equivalent in their careers and are experts of their respective fields including molecular biology and genetics, cell and developmental biology, me- dicine, pharmacology, plant biology, and biotechnology. RWS was founded in early 1998 by a group of life scientists who have come from China during the last 22 years. With the encouragement of Dr. Chris Tan, the Director of the Molecular Biology Institute in Singapore, who proposed to set up a fund in the name of Prof. Ray Wu of Cornell University to recognize his contribution to the academic exchange between China and the USA. A quick positive response was reflected from American Chinese scholars with a further proposal of forming a professional society. This initiative spread rapidly and widely throughout the existing networks of Chinese life-science professionals.