Young Chinese researchers who have returned from overseas say they are now conducting research in better working environments and with stronger support.

Jiang Tao spoke with two researchers about their work priorities and sentiments.

For more than three years, 31-year-old Li Ting has been working at Sichuan Agricultural University on how plants respond to drought stress.

In 2020, Li returned to her alma mater after getting her PhD degree at the Royal Academies of Belgium.

Professor Li Ting conducts experiment at a lab in Sichuan Agricultural University. [Photo: CGTN Radio]

Professor Li says she chose to study rapeseed because the oil plants, which abound in Sichuan Province, are playing an increasingly important role in the country.

"Our main goals include identifying the key genes that determine the endurance of the plants and analyze the mechanism so that we could find high-quality targets that could be used for producing drought-resistant plants."

This year, Chinese authorities again emphasized the need to expand the acreage of oil plants in its No. 1 Central Document that focuses on rural work.

Professor Li says with the support from the university, she and her team are glad to take the challenging job.

"Our university has provided us with better apparatus and funding. We have established a relatively well-structured team, with me being the team leader. We have also set up the first platform to evaluate the humidity resistance capacity of rapeseed plants in our province. The agricultural research in our country has joined the world's first class rank and more and more projects and resources are available to young researchers."

35-year-old Yang Chenxi, who got her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been working at a pharmaceutical enterprise in Sichuan for about two years.

Yang says COVID-19 prompted her to work at a pharmaceutical company because she wants to develop effective medicines for patients.

"Because we have just been through the COVID-19, I realized how important if we have some good medicines when we face this kind of disaster. I told myself I should go to a pharmaceutical company. It is very lucky for me to work here. My project also gives me the opportunity to study tradition Chinese medicine. It is very challenging but deserves to be pursued."

The researcher's main task now is to study a traditional Chinese medicine extracted from an insect to know exactly how it can treat gastric ulcers.

Researcher Yang Chenxi works at the office in Good Doctor Pharmaceutical Company in Sichuan Province. [Photo: CGTN Radio]

Yang says she finds working as a researcher more and more joyful and rewarding in recent years.

"I feel very comfortable and it's also very easy to fit into the whole research team here. It also has the most advanced instrument. I think the research gets better every year either from the research facility or the people who work on it, because I feel the government and many companies encourage innovation. They are willing to put more and more resource for the scientist."

Yang says more and more of her colleagues are overseas returnees thanks to the favorable research environment and advanced platforms available in their workplace.

The two researchers have both expressed the hope that they can better balance life and work in the future.