Prof. Francois Morel from Princeton University was awarded the “CAS Einstein Professorship” at IUE on May 18th, 2011 by Prof. Yongguan Zhu, Director General of IUE. Prof. Morel expressed his gratitude to IUE and CAS for the award of such an honorable title, and afterwards delivered a speech entitled “CO2 in the oceans & atmosphere — from the molecular to the global”. This introduced significant research progress in two research areas: marine phytoplankton (especially diatom) photosynthetic and growth molecular mechanism under conditions of low nitration and CO2; and the effects of marine acidification on iron bioavailability to marine phytoplankton.

Prof. Morel is IUE’s second recipient of the “CAS Einstein Professorship”, and follows the first winner, Prof. James M. Tiedje of Michigan State University. As an academician of the American Academy of Sciences and eminent professor of Princeton University, Prof. Morel has made prominent contributions in the field of trace element biogeochemical mechanisms and has received many awards, including the C.C. Patterson Medal of the American Geochemistry Society, the Maurice Ewing Medal of the American Geophysical Union, and the Urey Medal of the European Association for Geochemistry, among others. Prof. Morel is also an editorial member of many highly regarded international journals, including Environmental Microbiology, Biogeochemistry, Geobiology, Aquatic Sciences and so on. He has published more than 200 papers which have received more than 10,000 citations, including some papers published in Science and Nature.