The second session of the third Council of the Non-Party Intellectuals Association of Guangdong Province started on November 6th in Guangzhou. Prof. Steven F. Chen, Dean of the Institute for Advanced Study was elected the Vice-president at the meeting.

The Non-Party Intellectuals Association of Guangdong Province was founded in 2006. It is a high-level social group for non-party personages, non-party senior intellectuals with strong influence power. It plays a great role in the communication between the Party, the government and non-party intellectuals. 

The new VP Steven F. Chen graduated from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia with a Ph.D. degree in biochemical engineering in 1993. He is the Dean of the Institute for Advanced Study of Shenzhen University, a chair professor at Peking University, an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Queensland in Australia.He was awarded a Chang Jiang Scholarship by the Ministry of Education in 2004, and fellowships in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2008 and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2011; he is also a member of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST) and the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences (IEAS) (2014). Prof. Chen was the deputy dean of the College of Engineering of Peking University, the director of the Institute for Food and Bioresource Engineering at the College of Engineering of Peking University, the chief scientist of biomass energy at the Engineering Science and Emerging Technologies Innovative Center of Peking University, and a tenured professor and the executive dean of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Prof. Chen is currently serving as the director of the Energy Resources , the deputy secretary general at the China Science Center of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, the vice chairman of the International Teochew Doctors Association, the standing director of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology, and the deputy director general of the functional food branch of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology. He is on the editorial board of five international academic journals: Food & Function, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Process Biochemistry, Journal of Applied Phycology, and Biotechnology Letters. Prof. Chen’s research focuses on microalgal bioresources and bioenergy, bioengineering and functional foods. Prof. Chen has published nearly 300 research papers and reviews in international journals (SCI) ( according to Google Scholar, over 18,000 citations with an H-Index of 74), 5 monographs, and 31 patents in America and China. He has organized and made speeches at many international academic conferences. In 2017, Prof. Chen was rated as a Global Highly Cited Researcher.