Liu has long been dedicated to the research and development of biomedical materials and their translational applications, achieving innovative results with international impact. Focusing on tissue-regenerative materials, he has conducted in-depth research on calcium phosphate materials, elucidating their biotransformation mechanisms in biological microenvironments and establishing a solid scientific foundation for their biomedical applications. A pioneer in artificial bone research and development, he led the development of self-setting calcium phosphate artificial bone products that closely mimic the composition, structure, and function of autologous bone. These products have been adopted by more than 1,000 hospitals. He has also developed highly bioactive bone repair materials in China. Liu has published more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, holds 76 patents and invention disclosures (including five patents granted in the United States), and has contributed to five edited books. He has received the second-class National Natural Science Award, the second-class National Science and Technology Progress Award, and the second-class National Technological Invention Award.

Kwan is the Choh-Ming Li professor of geography and resource management, and director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK, the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Royal Geographical Society, and the Geographical Society of China. She has received numerous prestigious awards and honors from AAG, including the Distinguished Scholarship Honors, the Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography, the Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography, and the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography. She served as an editor of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers for 12 years. Kwan has made groundbreaking contributions to research on environmental health, human mobility, smart cities, and geographic information science (GIScience).

Huang earned his BSc and MSc degrees from China Agricultural University, and completed his PhD at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He currently serves as the president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and is a professor at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, CAAS. He has made seminal contributions to plant genomics and genome-based crop breeding: his team developed the first generation of highly homozygous inbred lines and hybrid potatoes by genome design, turning the crop from a clonally propagated tetraploid species into a seed-propagated diploid one. This transforms potato breeding from a slow, non-accumulative mode into a fast, iterative one, thus providing a new paradigm for the genetic improvement of clonal crops. Huang was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2023, and a foreign member of the Royal Society in 2025. Among his honurs are: the State Natural Science Award of China (2018), the Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (2018), the TWAS Award in agriculture, nutrition, and food systems sciences (2026), and the Tan Kah Kee Science Award in life science (2026).

Xiaomin Fang is a research professor at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Geographical Society of China and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Currently serving as the vice-president of both the China Quaternary Research Association and the Chinese Society for Sustainable Development, he previously chaired two international working groups: the Paleosols and Paleoclimate Change Working Group under the International Union for Quaternary Research / International Union of Soil Sciences Paleopedology Commission, and the Mountain Uplift and Climate Change Working Group under the International Union for Quaternary Research Neotectonics Commission. In recognition of his scientific contributions, he has been awarded twice the second prize of the State Natural Science Award of China.

Di serves as the director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and dean of the College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of CAS. She earned a PhD in solid earth physics from the Institute of Geophysics, CAS in 1998. Her research focuses on applied geophysics, and she has long been engaged in research on theoretical methods, technical equipment, and deep-exploration applications of electromagnetic wave propagation in the Earth. She enabled high-precision electromagnetic detection of geological bodies at depths of up to 10 kilometers, making systematic and creative contributions to deep resource exploration in China. She has expanded her work into the petroleum exploration and deep-earth drilling equipment, such as logging-while-drilling and rotary-steerable-system equipment and technologies. Among her accolades are multiple significant scientific and technological awards, including the 22nd China Patent Gold Award (2021), the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award (2019). She was elected as a CAS academician in 2021.