International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, IEAS

Academician

Zihe RAO

Profile:

Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2014, Professor Zihe Rao is a distinguished Chinese molecular biophysicist and structural biologist whose research and professional work have focused on the structural biology of infectious disease pathogens, protein structure and function, and structure-based drug design. Born in September 1950 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, he graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1977, received his M.S. from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1982, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1989. From 1989 to 1996, he conducted postdoctoral and research work at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He was elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003, Member of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2004, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015, Member of the European Academy of Sciences in 2021, and Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. He currently serves as a Member of the Presidium of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor at Tsinghua University and Nankai University, and as Honorary President of the Chinese Biophysical Society. He previously served as Director of the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, from 2003 to 2006, President of Nankai University from 2006 to 2011, and President of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) from 2014 to 2017, becoming the first Chinese scientist to hold the position.

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Professor Rao’s research has focused on the three-dimensional structures and functions of proteins and viruses associated with emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, together with the development of structure-based approaches to therapeutic discovery. Through national research programmes, including the National Key Research and Development Programme project Protein Machinery and Life Process Regulation and the former National 973 Programme Protein Project, his research group has investigated the atomic structures of a range of pathogenic viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, SARS coronavirus, avian influenza virus, hepatitis A virus, herpesviruses, and African swine fever virus. His work has also addressed energy and metabolite transport, drug-resistance mechanisms, and cell-wall synthesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, providing structural information relevant to antiviral and antibacterial drug discovery. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, including 23 papers in Cell, Nature, and Science, and has received the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Award, the Chen Jiageng Science Award, the TWAS Trieste Science Prize, and the inaugural Tan Jiazhen Life Science Achievement Award. Through sustained research, scientific leadership, and international academic service, Professor Rao has contributed to connecting structural biology and molecular biophysics with the study of infectious diseases and the development of structure-based strategies for therapeutic intervention.