Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2007, Professor Samuel S.-M. Sun is a distinguished agricultural biotechnology scientist whose research and professional work have focused on plant molecular biology, crop improvement, and the nutritional enhancement of food crops. Born in September 1942 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, he received his bachelor’s degree with honours from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1966, an honours degree and a master’s degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1968 and 1970, and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1974. Following postdoctoral research at Wisconsin, he held research and scientific leadership positions at the ARCO Plant Cell Research Institute in California from 1980 to 1987 and served as Professor at the University of Hawaii from 1987 to 1995. He returned to The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1996 as Chair Professor and Head of Biology, later directing the Centre for Plant and Agricultural Biotechnology under Hong Kong’s Areas of Excellence scheme and serving as Founding Director of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology. From 2009 to 2018, he was Founding Master of S. H. Ho College, and he is now Emeritus Professor of Biology at CUHK. A Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering since 2003, he has also held professorships or honorary appointments at universities and research institutions on the Chinese mainland and received the Friendship Award of the State Council of China and an Honorary Fellowship of CUHK.