Fang Lei, a long-time professor with Texas A&M University’s chemistry department, has returned to China to join the cutting-edge Yongjiang Laboratory, a state-backed research centre that has drawn a cumulative investment of more than 26 billion yuan (US$3.65 billion) in less than four years.

Fang built a distinguished career in the United States over nearly two decades, rising to be deputy head of the chemistry department at Texas A&M. He resigned from the university earlier this year to assume a full-time position at Yongjiang Laboratory, also known as Y-Lab.

Fang now serves as chair professor and director of the Centre for Functional Organic Materials at Y-Lab, leading efforts to pioneer next-generation organic materials for applications in flexible electronics, wearables, brain-computer interfaces and renewable energy technologies.

His homecoming marks the culmination of a journey that began in a small classroom in Poyang, Jiangxi province.

Born in 1983, Fang excelled in all his school subjects, but his passion and talent for science became clear in 1994 when he took chemistry in the fifth grade, according to an interview posted on Y-Lab’s website.

While in a Chinese class at the time, Fang secretly flipped through an old science textbook he had found at home and a passage describing how “sodium floats on the surface of water” captivated him.