‘Impossible for Chinese’: Yale scientist Zhang Kai leaves US to break racial ceiling

For Zhang Kai, a pioneering scientist who is building an ultra-large-scale cellular structure group data bank with unprecedented precision, returning home to China was the natural choice to fulfil his ambition. “In the United States, it is almost impossible for a Chinese scholar to take the lead on this project,” Zhang said during a March 26 interview with China Science Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the country’s most prestigious research institution.