Li Jian is a professional sketcher who values accuracy over creativity and draws to record, not to make art. The 61-year-old is a senior lab scientist at the Chengdu Institute of Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has dedicated himself to scientific sketching in the area of animal and plant taxonomy.

Jeremy Murray doesn't speak Chinese, but that didn't stop him from settling down in China. It was a risky maneuver, but he pulled it off. "Not a word of Chinese. But I function well here in Shanghai," said the 51-year-old Canadian scientist. Murray began in Canada before moving to the United States. He then moved to the United Kingdom to work at the John Innes Centre, a world-renowned plant and microbial science research institute. He made the decision to pursue his research in Shanghai about five years ago.

Within China's materials science community, colleagues often humorously refer to Yang Rui as the "hardest man" in the field. This is both a reference to his groundbreaking work on high-performance titanium alloys and an allusion to the extremely difficult missions that he and his team often undertake.

Thilina, a Sri Lankan student whose Chinese name is Li Xiang, came to China to pursue a doctorate degree at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in southwest China's Yunnan Province. Mainly studying beetles here, and enjoying the good scientific environment and climate, he said "China is my second hometown.”

Li Zhengyang, a researcher from the Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology of the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), who has twice been to Dome A, the peak of the Antarctica's inland icecap, said that carrying out scientific research in conditions of extremely low temperatures has been a difficult yet rewarding experience for him.

During the four years of PIFI program, Dr. Omisore published and presented 35 research articles in top-ranked journals and at various conferences. These efforts have earned him an accumulated ~1000 citations with an H-index of 16 on Google scholar. Moreover, he won several awards including the Excellent International Graduate of UCAS in 2019, IEEE-IES in 2017 and the TWAS-Elsevier travel grants to participate in international conferences and workshops in 2019.

What originally attracted me to study science was a desire to understand the world as it is. Science is universal and it is that universality that allows us as scientists to be able to collaborate with colleagues around the world. The renowned physicist and chemist, and a personal role model of Diana Czuchry, Marie Curie, stated: "After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it."

Plant scientist LIANG Lin develops cryopreservation technology to store seeds and plant tissues at liquid-nitrogen temperature to conserve biodiversity. Here at the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species of China at the Kunming Institute of Botany, we want to preserve the seeds of as many wild plants as possible from across China’s vast land area. I work on developing the best techniques to freeze plant seeds and tissues at ultracold temperatures, to maintain their viability for years.

"As a final note, I have some words of advice to my fellow international students: develop your language skills, learn about the Chinese culture, build support networks (research and social), get your supervisor on your side, and remember that your studies should be more than just a learning experience but also an enjoyable one, If things don't go as planned, don't give up just yet; try to fix it and remember that time always brings change," said Lukman.

The Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in the late 1950s by the late Cai Xitao, a respected botanist, in southwest China's Yunnan Province. Now, a group of young scientists are carrying forward Cai's scientific spirit.

"I have had the privilege and joy of working side by side with many excellent scientists from both US and China on harnessing fusion energy that powers the sun and the stars, in a shared vision to provide a clean and abundant energy for all humankind. This experience has taught me that science for the progress of humanity has no boundaries. Continued worldwide cooperation on science's biggest challenges will ensure a bright future for our children and grandchildren."