Dr. Qiu Yong was appointed President of Tsinghua University on March 26, with approval from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. Dr. Qiu succeeds Professor Chen Jining, who was appointed Minister for the Environment last month.

The announcement of the new president was made on March 26 at a meeting of senior Tsinghua administrators and faculty representatives. Mr. Pan Ligang, Organizing Department Vice Director of the Central Committee of the CPC, Mr. Yuan Guiren, Minister for Education, and Mr. Jiang Zhigang, Standing Committee Member and Organizing Department Director of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee attended the meeting. Professor Chen Xu, Tsinghua University Council Chairperson, and other university leaders also attended the meeting.

Professor Chen Jining has served as President of Tsinghua University since February 2012. Under Professor Chen’s leadership, Tsinghua has made significant achievements in discipline development, teaching, research, and faculty advancement.

Professor Dr. Qiu Yong was born in Sichuan province in 1964. He received a BS in 1988 and a PhD in 1994 in chemistry from Tsinghua University. He became Dean of the Department of Chemistry in 2002 and Vice Chair of the School of Sciences in 2008. Dr. Qiu was appointed Tsinghua University Vice President in 2009.

Dr. Qiu was honored as a Distinguished Young Scholar by the National Science Fund in 2003 and was appointed as a “Chang Jiang Scholar” by the Ministry of Education in 2006. He won the first award for National Technical Invention in 2011 and was elected as a CAS academician in 2013.

Dr. Qiu works in the field of photochemistry and organic optoelectronic materials. His research interests now focus on organic electronics, materials and devices for organic optoelectronics, such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic field effect transistors (OFETs). He has over 280 papers published in SCI indexed journals and has over 100 patents issued.