Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty
China has made no secret of its goal to attract the world’s best scientists. In the past three years, a parade of highly accomplished researchers has emigrated there.
Wolfgang Baumeister, a molecular biologist, started working in China in 2019, following nearly three decades at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, Germany.
Baumeister is the pioneer of cryogenic-electron tomography, which enables researchers to construct 3D images of large molecules and the insides of cells. For this work, he was awarded Hong Kong’s Shaw Prize for life science and medicine this year. Now based at the iHuman Institute at the ShanghaiTech University in China, he continues to study the molecular machinery involved in type 2 diabetes.
Nature met with Baumeister in Hong Kong. The following is an edited version of that conversation, and his talk to journalists at the Hong Kong Laureate Forum 2025.
Wolfgang Baumeister receiving the Shaw Prize this year.Credit: Hou Yu/China News Service/VCG via Getty
Why did you decide to move to ShanghaiTech University?
My colleagues and I had a big European Research Council grant for work on neurotoxic aggregates inside cells. But we have mandatory retirement in Germany. My contract was extended beyond the normal retirement age, and my colleagues in China knew that and said, ‘Why not come to China and you can continue?’
I also had offers from the United States to continue my research there, but they would have requested that I move there permanently. With ShanghaiTech University, I can come and go. I have been there six times this year, typically for two weeks at a time.
What is it like working as a scientist in China?
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