Since 2020, worsening geopolitical tensions and China’s rising analysis capabilities have made the nation more and more engaging to abroad expertise. As the U.S. imposed sanctions limiting China’s entry to superior semiconductors and manufacturing instruments, extra engineers, scientists and expertise specialists have headed again to help the nation’s drive for self-reliance, the South China Morning Post reported.
A 2025 examine by Shenzhen-based Dongbi Data discovered that China had surpassed the U.S. in the variety of prime science and expertise specialists. China’s complete climbed from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, whereas the U.S. determine dropped from 36,599 to 32,511 over the identical interval.
In this text, VnExpress International appears at a number of outstanding chip engineers who’ve just lately moved again to China.
Sun Nan
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Chip skilled Sun Nan. Photo courtesy of Tsinghua University |
Sun returned to China in 2020 to be a part of Tsinghua University after greater than a decade in the U.S., the place he constructed his profession in built-in circuit design. His transfer drew wider consideration in early 2025 when the Beijing-based college highlighted his work growing greater than 50 superior chips in simply over 4 years.
According to a February 2025 submit on Tsinghua’s social media account, Sun returned with the goal of “training chip professionals for China and solving the manufacturing problems of mid- and high-end chip technology.”
Since becoming a member of the college, Sun and his staff have labored on each scientific analysis and industrial purposes, specializing in producing extra dependable and environment friendly chips at decrease price. Their high-performance circuit design applied sciences have been built-in into chips used in energy grids, high-speed rail, industrial measurement and management methods, instrumentation and electrical autos.
Sun graduated from Tsinghua in 2006 because the top-ranked pupil in his main. He then pursued a doctorate in built-in circuit design at Harvard University earlier than becoming a member of the University of Texas at Austin’s electrical and pc engineering division in 2011. He earned tenure in 2017 and remained there till May 2020.
Among his honors, Sun obtained the Career Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2013 and the New Frontier Award from the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society in 2020. In 2023, he was awarded the Beijing Youth May Fourth Medal, the very best honor given by the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to excellent younger professionals.
Su Fei
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Chip engineer Su Fei. Photo courtesy of Tsinghua University |
Chip engineer Su joined Tsinghua as a full-time professor in September 2025 after almost 20 years at U.S. chip large Intel.
During his time in the U.S., he labored on bettering the reliability, safety and efficiency of superior microprocessors used in gadgets starting from smartphones to information facilities.
A senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Su stated he was “profoundly motivated” by alternatives to bridge tutorial analysis and industrial purposes, the SCMP reported.
He contributed to the event of a number of IEEE requirements and guided analysis collaborations between universities and trade by means of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. In 2021, he obtained the Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liaison Award for his management in analysis collaboration and pupil mentoring.
Su earned his bachelor’s and grasp’s levels from Tsinghua earlier than finishing a PhD in electrical and pc engineering at Duke University, U.S., in 2006.
He joined Intel the identical 12 months and has additionally obtained a number of finest paper awards, together with from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration Design.
Shi Guojun
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Semiconductor packaging skilled Shi Guojun. Photo courtesy of University of California, Irvine, U.S. |
Shi, a semiconductor packaging skilled, left the University of California, Irvine after more than 20 years to be a part of Chinese conductive supplies firm DK Electronic Materials, the corporate introduced on March 6.
He now serves as chief strategic scientist and director of the Future Industry Research Institute, overseeing strategic planning in rising industries with a deal with semiconductor reminiscence.
Based in Yixing, Wuxi, japanese China, DK Electronic Materials is among the world’s leading suppliers of photovoltaic metallization paste, with a worldwide market share of round 25% final 12 months.
Shi’s reference to the corporate dates again to 2017, when it donated U$1 million to set up a laboratory on the University of California, Irvine below his path.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in agricultural meteorology on the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology in 1983, adopted by a grasp’s diploma in micrometeorology on the University of Guelph in Canada. He later shifted his analysis focus to supplies science and accomplished a PhD in chemical engineering and supplies science on the California Institute of Technology in 1992.
Shi has printed greater than 200 tutorial papers and have become a tenured professor at UC Irvine. In 2010, he obtained the Outstanding Sustained Technical Contribution Award from the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Society, and was elected an IEEE fellow in 2011.
Jiang Jianfeng
Jiang, 30, returned to Peking University in March 2026 after about one and a half years in the U.S. to function a principal investigator, affiliate professor and PhD supervisor.
In an interview with China Science Communication, Jiang defined his resolution to return: “Professor Peng Lianmao once said, ‘One should take root where the country needs strengthening and rise when the times demand it.’”
Peng, Jiang’s PhD adviser at Peking University, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the School of Electronics.
Jiang additionally advised Peking University that his return was “not a momentary impulse, however fairly a extra pure alternative,” including that the college’s long-standing analysis basis in low-dimensional electronics supplied a possibility to construct a analysis staff and conduct systematic, long-term work.
Jiang’s analysis focuses on two-dimensional semiconductor supplies comparable to indium selenide, which might assist overcome the bodily limits of conventional silicon chips and help next-generation electronics.
After finishing his PhD at Peking in June 2024 and a short postdoctoral stint on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned to lead his personal analysis group.
He has printed in leading journals together with “Science,” “Nature” and “Nature Materials.” His work consists of demonstrating wafer-scale manufacturing of high-quality indium selenide movies and growing new transistor architectures utilizing two-dimensional semiconductor supplies.