DING Zhongli, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Vice President of CAS, was named president of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) Monday morning in Beijing.  

CAS Vice President ZHAN Wenlong announced the appointment at a meeting at UCAS’s Yuquan Road Campus. He also announced the appointment of WU Yueliang, XI Nanhua, GAO Hongjun, GUO Zhengtang, SU Gang, WANG Yanfen and WANG Ying as vice presidents of UCAS.

DING said as president of UCAS he will further promote the integration of scientific research and education at the university and provide students the best science and education resources CAS has to offer.

DING, a Quaternary geologist, was born in Shengzhou, Zhejiang Province in 1957 and graduated in 1982 from the Department of Geology of Zhejiang University. In 1988, he obtained his Ph.D. from the CAS Institute of Geology, predecessor to today's CAS Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGGCAS). DING served as director of IGGCAS from 2000 to 2007. He was elected an academician of CAS in 2005 and Chairman of the Chinese National Committee for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (CNC-IGBP) in 2008. 

DING’s research has focused on Quaternary climate change and associated mechanisms. He made a systematic observation and pedostratigraphic correlation of the loess sequences across the Chinese Loess Plateau, laying a basis for later studies. He was the first to establish a 2.6-Ma orbital timescale of stacked grain-size records for Chinese loess, which is highly compatible with marine isotope records. 

UCAS was founded in 1978 as the Graduate School of CAS. UCAS offers Ph.D. programs in 146 fields and master’s programs in 170 fields. Its programs primarily focus on the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, management and education. So far, UCAS has conferred almost 110,000 master’s and doctoral degrees. 

Currently, UCAS has 12,658 academic advisors, including 330 CAS and/or Chinese Academy of Engineering academicians, and 6,185 doctoral supervisors. The university will welcome its first undergraduates this fall.