On November 18, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the list of latest academician additions. Professor Su-yuan Xie, deputy director of the lab, was elected as academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Professor Xie has focused on carbon clusters for more than twenty years. He proposed the "strain relief" and "local aromaticity" principles for the stabilization of fused-pentagon fullerenes, and synthesized a series of fused-pentagon fullerenes, which greatly enriched the fullerene family. He invented a multi-stage combustion equipment for fullerene industry which largely promoted efficiency of fullerene production. Besides, his research was extended to derivatization of fullerenes, fullerene-based photovoltaics, carbon nanocones, single-molecule devices and so on.

He has published more than 150 papers on the carbon clusters in flagship journals, such as Science, Nat Chem, Nat Mater , Nat Nanotech, Sci Adv, Nat Commnun, J Am Chem Soc, Angew Chem Int Ed. He wrote the book "Fullerenes: Fundamentals and Applications" and a chapter "Fullerene Synthetic Chemistry" in "Modern Inorganic Synthetic Chemistry". He won the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award in 2006 and 2015.