Chen Peng, chemical biologist. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese chemical biologist Chen Peng has received the latest Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award in recognition of his original and innovative scientific and technological achievements.

The award is given every two years in China to only one scientist under the age of 40 in six fields, including mathematics and physics, chemistry and Earth science.

As the principal investigator of the Center for Life Sciences of Peking University-Tsinghua University, the 37-year-old leads a lab that is focused on protein chemistry and engineering.

He is also a PhD supervisor in the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University.

The lab aims to explore and apply protein-based platform technologies to study life sciences, and many of its research projects surround the host-pathogen interface, with a particular interest in understanding how pathogens employ a wide array of protein effectors to subvert host defense and establish infection.

The research findings can provide new tools to develop medicines against cancer and infectious diseases, Chen says.

"I love what I'm doing," he says, adding that he is always motivated by science.

Born in 1979 in Lanzhou, the capital of Northwest China's Gansu province, Chen has been fascinated with chemistry since a young age.

He enrolled in Peking University in 1998 to study chemistry without taking the national college entrance exam, because he had won a top prize at a science competition.

After four years of study at the leading Chinese institution, he went to the University of Chicago for further education in 2002, under the guidance of He Chuan, a well-known Chinese-American chemical biologist.

There, Chen was exposed to frontier research in chemical biology and completed projects with fellow students and their professors. Their findings were published in top scientific publications.

In 2007, Chen got a PhD in chemistry and was given the university's Elizabeth R. Norton Prize for excellence in research in chemistry. Only three students had earned the award that year.

He continued his postdoctoral research in the United States but eventually decided to return to China.

His parents couldn't adapt to life in the US.

The years he spent in the US deepened his love for China, as expats feel for their homeland when away, he says.

In 2009, Chen took the offer from Peking University to build a world-class chemical biology lab.

Two years later, he became one of the first researchers in the newly established Center for Life Sciences of Peking University-Tsinghua University, a cooperative program supported by the central government to reform education and research in life sciences at the two top universities.

Chen has won many awards since, including Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship in 2014. The award is given every year by the international editorial board of the Chemical Society Reviews under the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain, to a rising scientist who has made remarkable achievements in the independent study of chemistry or related fields.

Chen says China is developing its scientific research fast and, as an individual researcher, he is getting abundant support.

He is also a mentor to young talent, helping to nurture critical thinking.

"Working abroad, I probably would have a prosperous life. But in China, the sky is the limit," Chen says.