Former US defence researcher Zhan Hanyu joins China’s elite aerospace university

Name: Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China?
Uploaded: 2025-03-20T06:00:09.000Z
Duration: 8 min 30 s
Description: Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China?

Zhan joins university named on US Entity List because of ties to China’s military after involvement in many American research projects

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In December, Zhan Hanyu became a full-time professor at the college of automation engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics after studying and working in the US for more than 15 years. Photo: The Paper

Ling Xinin Ohio

Published: 2:00pm, 20 Mar 2025Updated: 3:25pm, 20 Mar 2025

Optical expert Zhan Hanyu has joined one of China’s top aerospace universities after studying and working in the United States for more than 15 years.

The 38-year-old became a full-time professor in December at the college of automation engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) – a university placed on the US Entity List and subject to export restrictions because of its ties to China’s military sector.

Zhan’s research focuses on vision-based navigation, advanced optical sensing and multi-source perception and information fusion, according to his profile on the college website.

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Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China?

“Students with a science or engineering background are welcome to join my team. Relevant fields include, but are not limited to, navigation, optics, automation and image processing,” the profile says.

He has a mix of academic and industry experience, having worked as a research scientist at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and a machine vision systems engineer at the headquarters of glass company Corning in New York for several years before returning to China.

According to his profile, Zhan took part in more than 20 “major projects” in the US, including those related to intelligent manufacturing, as well as listed but unnamed programmes that may involve sensitive technologies in the defence or aerospace sector.

Zhan received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Zhengzhou University in 2008 before moving to the US where he earned a master’s from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut in 2012 and a PhD from NMSU in 2016.