5.Professor Zheng-Ming Li
author:张玮光  Release time:2017-10-13   Browse times:47

Professor Zheng-Ming Li is a well knownorganic and agrochemical chemist.Hewas elected as an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1995.

He participated in a plant hormone research project led by honorable Professor Shi-Xian Yang in the 1950s, as well as in the organo-phosphorus chemistry collaboration project with Russian counterparts during the following decade.Due to his contribution in phosphorus chemistry, he and otherprofessorsshared the lNational Natural Science Award(second class).He also won a National Science Convention Award due to his synthetic process of phenazine as a special agent for control of rice bacterial blight.He undertook National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) key projects “Basic Research in Agrochemicals” and “Innovation Research in Novel Agrochemicals” which were ranked “excellent” by NSFC Appraisal Experts.

In the beginning of the current century, Prof. Li proposed the definition of “Green Pesticide” at the Xiangshan Workshop in which presentation he put forward the criteria to abide as following: to be harmless to humanhealth, eco-friendly, hyper-active, highly selective, to clarify its mode of action, to develop green synthetic and application technology.Meanwhile, he stressed the importance to study its ecological impact on the environment instead of the traditional concept of emphasizing solely on high efficacy and low toxicity.

Under the guidance of this concept, Prof. Li partly revised the internationally acknowledgedLevitt theory on the structure and activity relationship of hyper-active sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides and put forward the theory of three critical structural elements of SU activity.He led his team to innovate two SU herbicides, monosulfuron and nonosulfuron ester, and clarified the mechanism of its mode of action at the molecular level.It is the only two inventive hyper-active herbicides with independent intellectual property rights so far has been officially registered in China. He and his team won the National Technological Invention Award (second class) .
In addition, Prof. Li was involved in research on new synthetic methodology of highly-active fungicide Fenxiuning, biorational pesticide such as insect pheromones, natural products etc
. With these achievements, he received National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1993 (first class).

Prof. Li has been successfully participating in many national and provincial projects: National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) etc.In total, he has received 4 national awards, 9 provincial awards, 12 individual awards and 1 international award.As the director of Elemento-Organic Chemistry (EOC) Institute of Nankai University then, with the strong support from Nankai University, Prof. Li and his colleagues successfully won the official approval to establish the State Key Laboratory of EOC and National Pesticide Engineering Research Center (Tianjin) (NPERC). He followed the principle of “Opening, Circulating, Competing and Uniting” when he was appointed as the head of State Key Lab, which was appraised later as “NationalResearchUniversities Advanced Institute” and “Excellent State Key Laboratory”.Prof. Li et al endeavored to receive the official approval to set up the academic disciplines of Organic Chemistry as well as Pesticide Chemistry, the State approval to confer doctorate and post-doc degrees for these two disciplines, which were upgraded finally to be two National Key Disciplines.During the establishment of NPERC, he and his colleagues constructed a new biology screening building and a pilot plant. Many young professionals were recruited and well disciplined.He was committed to the national policy for the Center “ to innovate new green pesticides, to transfer technology and to serve the industry”, and explored new approach in the “integration of industry, universities and research institutes” policy.In 2004, NPERC successfully passed the joint official assessment from State Development & Reform Commission and Ministry of Education.

As one of the academic seniors, Prof. Li has been participating in numerous academic and social works, engaging in international exchanges and cooperation for the development of organic chemistry and pesticide chemistry disciplines, and plays an active role in improving their international influences for our country .