The UCLA expert in artificial muscles and skin is set to lead a physics and engineering institute.
A materials scientist whose path carried him from rural China to California is now heading to Macau following three decades in the United States.
As indicated on the University of Macau’s website, Pei Qibing has been appointed as chair professor and director of the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering.
Pei, now an emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, started his education in a markedly different setting, attending a small rural school on an island in the Yangtze River in the central province of Anhui.
“Since the school lacked enough chairs, students had to bring their own stools.
“Because the rural primary school didn’t have sufficient students to offer a class for each grade, Pei and his older sister were placed in the same class,” former classmate Wang Xianglong told local media in the nearby city of Tongling two years ago.
Wang noted that Pei had been at the top of the class before pursuing chemistry studies at Nanjing University in 1981.