Pan Zhongli’s biography

47-year-old Pan Zhongli is from Xichangfa Town, Beilin District, Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province. After graduating from Northeast Agricultural University with a master's degree, he studied in the United States in 1988. He earned a second master's degree from the University of Illinois and a doctorate from the University of California at Davis in 1998. Immediately after graduation, he was hired by ADM, a well-known agricultural product processing company, as the technical service director of the Far East region. Subsequently, he worked for the USDA Scientific Research Service for seven years, where he researched and solved many problems in saving energy, purifying the environment, and improving the nutritional value of food in food processing. The most eye-catching one was the use of infrared heating when drying fruits and vegetables. The new technology replaces the traditional freeze-drying technology, and also uses infrared heating technology to replace the traditional chemical enzyme sterilization in food enzyme sterilization, and replaces the bus method in almond enzyme sterilization and rice insecticide. Because of his outstanding contributions in food processing, storage and safety, Pan Zhongli became the first Chinese scientist to win the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Herbert Laporte Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Agricultural Research Scientist Award. In 2008, after many rounds of selection, Pan Zhongli won the Presidential Award for Young Scientists of the United States. When President Bush delivered a congratulatory speech at the award ceremony, he praised the scientists who received this award as being elite talents in the United States.

Pan Zhongli’s wife, Dr. Zhang Ruihong, is also an agricultural scientist with extraordinary contributions. She won the Young Scholar Award of the American Society for Agricultural Bioengineering in 2003. They are also the only couple who have successively served as presidents of the Overseas Chinese Agricultural, Biological and Food Engineers Association.

After living in the United States for 20 years, Pan Zhongli and Zhang Ruihong gave birth to two children. The 17-year-old boy Pan Feng graduated from high school and will go to San Diego to attend college this year. Pan Hong, a 7-year-old girl, is the apple of her parents' eyes and is very smart. The couple insists on teaching their children Chinese and educating them on traditional Chinese culture.