Xiaokun Shu

Shu Xiaokun is a life scientist who left his position as Herfindahl Endowed Chair Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to join Fudan University in Shanghai as a distinguished professor and founding director of the Institute of Chemical and Open Biotechnology Research and Application, launching in March 2026.

Shu began his academic career in 1996 in the theoretical physics department at Sichuan University before shifting toward the life sciences over the course of his career, which included appointments at UC San Diego, where he became an associate professor in 2010, and later UCSF. He secured more than $20 million in research funding during more than two decades in the US, including the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2012 ($2.36 million) and the Maximizing Investigators' Research Award in 2019 ($5.91 million). The new Fudan institute will focus on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of physics, chemistry, and biology, including next-generation fluorescent probes, chemical genetics tools, and targeted cancer therapies.