Chen is member of CAS, professor and director of Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is the president and fellow of China Geography Society. He obtained his PhD in 1990 at Lanzhou University. He is vice-presidents of IGU Environment Evolution Commission, China Society on Tibetan Plateau, Chinese Quaternary Science Associate. His prizes include China National Excellent Scientist in 2005; National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2003; China Youth Science and Technology Award in 1996; Second award of National Natural Science in 2007 and 2018; five awards of Natural Science by Ministry of Education of China. He has published more than 690 papers in peer-reviewed journals of both English and Chinese with more than 420 papers published in SCI journals such as Nature, Science, NCC, NC, PNAS, QSR, which are cited more than 19900 times by papers of SCI journals with H index of 69.

Dr. Jikun Huang is Professor at School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences and Honorary Director of China Center for Agricultural Policy (CCAP) and Director of New Rural Development Institute in Peking University, Fellow TWAS, Honorary Life Member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), and Fellow of Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). He is vice-president of Chinese Association of Agro-technology Economics. He received his BS degree from Nanjing Agricultural University in 1984 and PhD in agricultural economics from University of the Philippines at Los Banos in 1990. His research covers a wide range of issues on China's agricultural economics, policies and rural development. He received Award for China’s Outstanding Youth Scientists in 2002, Outstanding Achievement Award for Overseas Returning Chinese in 2003, Fudan Prize for Eminent Contributor to Management Science in 2008, and IRRI’s Outstanding Alumni Award in 2010. He has published more than 600 journal papers, including the papers published in Science, Nature and many leading journals in development economics. He is co-author of 20 books.