On April 16, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) announced 2019 award recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of ecology in research, teaching, services, and sustainability. Prof. Jingyun Fang, the Founding Director of the Institute of Ecology at PKU, receives the Robert H. Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award.

As noted by the Robert H. Whittaker Award Committee:

The Whittaker Award recognizes an ecologist with an earned doctorate and an outstanding record of contributions in ecology who is not a U.S. citizen and who resides outside the United States.

Dr. Jingyun Fang – a Cheung Kong Scholar, Professor, and Chair of the Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University – is one of the most renowned ecologists in China. During his career, Fang has played pivotal roles in the advancement of ecology, in informing national and international policy, and in building a scientific community of ecologists in China. He makes significant contributions to the understanding of carbon cycling, biodiversity, remote sensing, and plant stoichiometry. Fang has published 7 books and over 370 peer-reviewed papers, including key papers in Science, Nature, and PNAS. His work uses environmental and anthropogenic gradients at local and national scales – conceptually similar to Whittaker's classical gradient studies – to markedly influence the understanding of the variation in and controls over diversity, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services. His body of work advances numerous concepts that Whittaker pioneered, and also establishes new standards of scientific rigor that were impossible in Whittaker's time.

Source: https://www.esa.org/esa/ecological-society-of-america-announces-2019-award-recipients/