Chai Jijie [Photo/futureprize.org] 

Chai Jijie, a member of the Biophysical Society of China (BSC), pocketed the Future Science Prize in life sciences alongside Zhou Jianmin, a research fellow at the CAS Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, according to the list released on Aug 16. 

Chai was commended for his discovery of resistosomes and the elucidation of their molecular structures and functions in plants’ immune responses against pathogens.

He pursued doctoral and postdoctoral research at Peking Union Medical College, the CAS Institute of Biophysics and Princeton University. He is currently a chair professor of plant immunology at West Lake University's School of Life Sciences.

The Future Science Prize focuses on original fundamental scientific research and aims to recognize outstanding scientific achievements made by scientists from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The award consists of the three categories of life science, physical science, and mathematics and computer science, each with a prize of $1 million.