Zuowei XIE, Chair Professor of the Department of Chemistry at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was recently awarded the 2022 Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany.

Prof. Zuowei XIE is also a member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry.

His main research interests center around organometallic and main group chemistry with the focus on (super)carboranes, metallacarboranes, catalytic B-H bond functionalization and small molecule activation, as well as low-valent main group elements.

Prof. XIE has made important contributions to carborane chemistry by developing a general strategy for catalytic selective cage BH functionalization and synthetic methods for the synthesis of supercarboranes.

He has received several prestigious awards, including the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Inaugural Senior Research Fellowship Award, the Chinese Chemical Society Yao-Zeng Huang Award in Organometallic Chemistry, the State Natural Science Prize, and the Croucher Award, among others.

Other academicians at SUSTech who have previously received the prize include Vice President and Dean of the College of Science Prof. Xueming YANG and Chair Professor Qiang XU.

Established in 1972 by the Alexander Humboldt Foundation in Germany, the Humboldt Research Prize is specially awarded to outstanding foreign scholars who have made outstanding achievements in their respective fields, and are expected to achieve greater achievements in the future. It is the highest honor awarded by the Humboldt Foundation to foreign scholars.

Candidates must have proposed their original theories or made major discoveries and inventions, had a significant impact and contributions on their research fields, and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge academic achievements in the future.

The Humboldt Research Award will support Prof. XIE to conduct research in Germany at the University of Würzburg.