Pioneering bioscientist Jean Shih in her lab, with some of the knockout mice (foreground) she bioengineered to study the brain enzyme MAO. Photographed by Joe Pugliese

Issue: Spring 2005

Shih’s Gotta Have It

For decades this world-famous USC bioscientist – a product of the modern Chinese diaspora – dreamed of reuniting her compatriots in science. Last summer, it happened big-time in Beijing.

By Eric Mankin

Of those who were there – including an extraordinary assemblage of the world’s best scientific leaders – many believe the meeting last July in Beijing will be seen as a milestone in the evolution of China’s biological sciences, and indeed in all that nation’s sciences, casting a shadow forward for decades.

They will remember how it began: an American woman, a scientist with an international reputation, welcoming thousands of her colleagues in ringing, flawlessly phrased Mandarin. A woman whose face became familiar to the whole city – and country – in intensive TV coverage of the 10th meeting of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America. Elite scholarly publications such as Science and Nature reported on it. Chinese media buzzed about it: both the symbolism and practical value of thousands of ethnic-Chinese biological scientists from the United States, Europe and across Asia coming to Beijing to talk shop with a wide cross-section of their mainland Chinese colleagues.

The American woman is Jean Chen Shih, a University Professor based in USC’s School of Pharmacy and Keck School of Medicine whose experimental research on the function of a gene called MAO – implicated in depression, anxiety and criminality – is regarded as groundbreaking. Planning this reunion required almost as much vision and patience, and was as passionately pursued by Shih, as solving the riddle of MAO.

Jean Shih’s life is a classic American immigrant success story. She was born in beautiful Kunmin City of Yunan Province, in China’s southwest, to parents hailing from the east, near Shanghai. The Chens named their daughter Jing (“rainbow”) Hong (“beautiful scenery”). As a child Jing Hong moved with her family to Taipei, where she later attended college at the National Taiwan University, finishing as class valedictorian. She decided to come to the United States for graduate school, earning a biochemistry Ph.D. in 1968 through a joint program of UCLA and UC Riverside. In time, “Jing” changed to Jean; and Chen compounded with Shih upon her marriage to a fellow Chinese immigrant, computer scientist and entrepreneur John Shih.

John Shih was then only a UCLA doctoral student; later he would found S.Y. Technology, a major defense contractor.

Husband and wife both thrived in the United States thanks to education and research. As S.Y. grew, so too did Jean Shih’s academic career. In addition to being a University Professor – a title awarded to senior faculty of exceptional distinction – she is the Boyd and Elsie Welin Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology at the USC School of Pharmacy.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that she’s one of the top two or three researchers in our history,” says pharmacy dean Timothy Chan. Some milestones: Shih is a two-time winner of the coveted MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health, the first woman to receive the Volwiler Research Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, and a member of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, equivalent to our National Academy of Sciences.

“This is a wonderful country,” she says, “and it is such a great a place to do science.”

The Shihs’ life story, while uniquely American, reflects a modern reality of Chinese culture, too. In the 20th and 21st centuries – a period of intense Chinese diaspora – émigrés to Asia and North America have been instrumental in the remaking of China into a modern, international state that nevertheless remains firmly fixed on the foundations of a 5,000-year history.

The story is, among other things, one in which USC has played a surprisingly prominent role.

One place to begin is on a Friday night at the Shih home in Beverly Hills, where a large group of friends gather around a karaoke machine. Most have known each other since they banded together years ago to found a school. Shih took the lead in organizing the Chinese School of West Los Angeles, where her two sons spent their Saturdays learning Mandarin language and culture.

The friends take turns crooning tunes from Chinese classics to the contemporary hit parade. To be sure, Jean Shih loves to sing, but the camaraderie is what’s most important. That sense of community also runs through her writing. In addition to bylines on hundreds of scholarly articles, she contributes short essays to the readers’ views (“fu kan”) columns of local and international Chinese papers. Her articles have paid homage to the intangible gifts Shih received from her mother, mourned the untimely death of an uncle, offered personal reflections on daily life and on new discoveries in medical research.

		Top, Jean and John Shih join their son Jack, in a friendly game of mahjong at home. Bottom, son Jeff (left) and his wife Meg, with his brother and mother.

Though her sons are well-versed in Chinese culture, they’re unabashedly American. Both are golf- and tennis-mad. Older son Jeff is a math education professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Younger son Jack MFA ’97 graduated from the USC School of Cinema-Television and now works as an animator for Comedy Central’s “South Park” series.

“I don’t always understand the humor,” Shih says of the irreverent American pop-culture icon, “but I always watch to the end to look for Jack’s name on the credits.”

Shih has been at USC for Jack’s entire life – almost to the day. She loves to tell the story: how that final job interview in 1974 came in the last month of her pregnancy. As she sat in meetings, gave her job-talk and toured the facility, her future colleagues refrained from mentioning her delicate condition. (“Maybe they didn’t notice I was pregnant,” she surmises. “Maybe they thought I was a bit heavy.”)

Jack arrived soon thereafter. At home and flooded with calls from friends and family, Shih found it a bit odd when USC pharmacologist Myron Weiner phoned with his congratulations. She remembers thanking him kindly and informing him that it was a boy.

“There was silence at the other end of the line,” Shih recalls with amusement. Surely that silence was accompanied by a look of blank confusion on Weiner’s face. He had meant to congratulate her, it turned out, on getting the nod from the pharmacy hiring committee he chaired.

Jack’s lifetime has turned into an extraordinarily fertile time for the USC School of Pharmacy, thanks to his mother’s accomplishments, including a career that has also served as a bridge between two world cultures.

For decades, shih has played a leading role in the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America, the group that attracted so much public attention last summer in Beijing. Shih and a small group of émigrés founded the society 20 years ago as a forum for sharing their research findings – as well as their common experiences as ethnic Chinese working in the United States. “We felt that we needed a network,” Shih says. An additional goal was to support young bioscientists in the old country.

The SCBA now counts more than 3,000 members. It has convened meetings all over the United States, in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, but until last year, never on the Chinese mainland. As the biennial gatherings grew in size and prestige, they attracted more and more top-level scientists – and not just among the émigrés.

It proved difficult, however, to stage a meeting in China. Shih took on the task as a personal challenge, spending three years battling to get clearances and visas and documentation. When it seemed that everything was all in order, at the last minute the SARS outbreak forced a cancellation and a year’s delay. But finally, the date of the meeting arrived; and with it, the fulfillment of a set of long-understood expectations.

What are called “returned scholars” – Chinese nationals educated abroad who return to China – have played a key role in the nation’s modern history. And a surprising number of these people have been educated at USC.

In the center of Beijing is the Western Returned Scholars Association meeting hall; founded in 1913, the association serves as an umbrella for scientists and others intent on sharing the knowledge they acquired abroad. Not the least influential among these returned scholars is former vice mayor of Beijing, Lei Jieqiong ’31, a key architect of China’s social service system and an early advocate for women and children. When USC President Steven B. Sample visited the city in 1995, it was Lei who welcomed him.

With the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of the last 20 years, investments and input from ethnic Chinese based in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia have become major forces. And here again, USC has played an unusually prominent role. Historically enrolling large numbers of non-U.S. citizen students, the university has produed a disproportionate share of these new stakeholders. During the past decade, dozens of young Hong Kong-based Trojans have led companies that invest aggressively in the mainland. They include people like Lily Chaing ’82, a senior member of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, who after directing investments and building factories in China for her Hong Kong-based family business – the biggest manufacturer of plastic molding equipment in the world – went off to found her own companies: Eco-Tek Holdings, which manufactures and sells environmental protection equipment in China; and E-1 Media Technology, which designs computer games for Sony.

Chaing’s success is by no means the exception. Hong Kong-based Trojans have become powerful forces in real estate, frozen foods, printing, condiments, shipping, electrical equipment, garments and banking – the list goes on and on.

Similar stories have been playing out across Asia. In the last 50 years, more than 25,000 east and southeast Asian students have graduated from USC – more than from any other university outside Asia, USC officials believe. These graduates undoubtedly have been a force behind the wave of commercial activity causing the meteoric rise of China’s economy.

Lately, however, another important Chinese diaspora community is receiving recognition: Chinese living in the United States. These émigrés are making what SCBA executive director Joseph K.K. Li, a biologist at University of Utah, calls an “intellectual investment” – distinct from the direct fostering of Chinese businesses, though many of them are also active in commerce.

Shih’s co-chair of the SCBA Beijing meeting, Zhu Chen – vice president of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy – sees these overseas intellectuals contributing to the science and technology development of China in three major ways: As promoters of formal U.S.-China exchanges in science and technology; as advocates for the training and placement of Chinese students and scholars at U.S. universities and research institutions; and as direct participants in research and development programs across China. Some of these overseas intellectuals will return to China permanently, while others will help in other ways: establishing new R&D programs, working as consultants and providing general guidance in all research activities.

While the trends Chen cites have been in progress for years, it seemed to many observers that the scope and scale of the recent SCBA meeting in Beijing kicked the process up a level. Chen calls it “the best comprehensive life science meeting in China – one of the best in the world.”

Chinese National Academy director of international affairs Jinghua Cao agrees.

“The meeting was of great significance,” he says. “It discussed some of the most exciting and stimulating developments in life science, particularly health sciences. Almost all the key officials in the science and technology community in China attended the opening ceremony” – the ceremony that Shih proudly led in English and in her mother tongue.

The meeting convened in the Beijing International Convention Center on the grounds of the former Asian Olympic Games village. It brought together more than 2,000 researchers from around the world. As Shih tallied in a follow-up report to the SCBA, the proceedings consisted of “750 abstracts, six plenary talks, 52 workshop sessions and five discussion forums. It covered all fields in life science.”

Standing at the podium on opening night, Shih could tell this gathering was going to be different. In the past, she says, “when I looked in the audience, I always saw mostly familiar faces. But this time – there were so many, many young people. I looked down, and it was all people I didn’t know.”

There were also faces she recognized but would not have expected to see in Beijing. From the American side, she counted five Nobel laureates, including Caltech president David Baltimore. From USC alone, the meeting drew Michael Lai, distinguished professor of microbiology and neurology; Cheng-Ming Chuong, professor of pathology; David Ann, professor of molecular pharmacology and toxicology; James Ou, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology; Wei-Chiang Shen, professor of pharmaceutical sciences; and Amy Lee, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Also present was USC pharmacy school dean Timothy Chan.

The 10th SCBA International Symposium was co-sponsored by just about every notable organization in Chinese science: Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, plus five other government ministries.

While most of the Americans in attendance had Chinese roots, there was a substantial delegation of scientists, like Baltimore, who did not. The overall effect was overwhelming, and the message was clear: American Chinese had come triumphantly home, bearing intellectual gifts.

“SCBA has had a long tradition of helping Chinese bioscientists in North America and in Asia,” says USC’s Lai. “By holding its symposium in China for the first time, the SCBA has extended its influence to a greater continent. Jean Shih has exerted her leadership in overcoming many obstacles to make this happen. She and other scientists will provide role models for many young Chinese scientists.”

This was particularly true of young Chinese women scientists. “Every woman there wanted to have her picture taken with Jean,” says Utah’s Li.

Not just the scientist, actually. Shih became an overnight celebrity. “We gave about 20 interviews to newspapers,” explains Li. “And all over Beijing, people were telling Jean, ‘I saw you on TV.’”

In putting together the program, Shih took care to provide numerous other female role models. Of the 300 presenters at the event, 100 were distinguished women scientists.

The presentations themselves ran the whole gamut of biological science – from medicine to molecular biology to traditional Chinese herbal medicine.

The new science came primarily from overseas, admits the Chinese National Academy’s Cao, but it was not entirely a one-way street. “Many of the [American] participants were very impressed by the rapid development of science in China.”

And the continued rapid development of Chinese biological science seems likely to be influenced for years by those busy July days. Post-docs and students from Chinese universities attended the sessions in large numbers, according to Cao. The net effect, he says, will be at the very least “to facilitate the development of life sciences in China; strengthen the friendships between domestic scientists and scientists from overseas; help create lots of cooperative linkages between domestic scientists and scientists overseas; and promote cooperation between Chinese and foreign institutions.”

Indeed, a flurry of joint research agreements came directly out of the meeting. UC Berkeley put together a collaboration with the Shanghai Institute of Biological Science, for example. Other deals it triggered have yet to be inked. USC pharmacy school’s Timothy Chan says he expects to “have one [to announce] in the near future.”

Shih and Li also made special efforts to meet with and reach out to a constituency they considered extremely important: high school teachers. The media helped in this, by covering the event in such depth. Just the presence of more than 200 Chinese-looking, Chinese-speaking Americans sent a powerful message to young and not-so-young Chinese, who flooded the SCBA website and swarmed the exhibition hall.

Shih was struck by the enthusiasm of the Chinese press covering the event. “The reporters were so young,” she says. “There were so many of them, and they were so high-tech. I have been to China many times. This is not something I remember ever seeing before. It is a very big change.”

The future will tell how many Nobel laureates and biotechnology entrepreneurs got their start or inspiration in the feverish excitement of the Chinese bioscientists’ triumphant return to Beijing. But for the event’s organizer and acknowledged guiding spirit, the message of the conference is one of humility and great optimism.

“There were so many young people,” says Shih. “I first thought there would be more people like me. But they were students and researchers, many who gave up much to attend the meeting so they could learn something new,” she says.

“And that gives me hope. Great hope.”

Eric Mankin is a writer based at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. His last article, “Requiem for the Term Paper,” appeared in the Spring 2004 issue.