Challenges for China's medical education in the coming post-COVID-19 era.

The year of 2020 has been overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical workers throughout China have played critical roles in battling severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and saving lives. The whole of society has now fully realized the significance of medical workers and many began to think about medical education in China: How can we further improve medical education for the next generation of clinicians, medical scientists, nurses, public-health workers and administrators related to medical care, so that they are well prepared to meet societal needs for medical care in the ever-changing world? In this panel discussion, medical-education experts from several prominent medical schools in China gathered to discuss the reform and future development of China's medical education. Xiang Chen President of Xiangya School of Medicine, Vice President of Central South University, Changsha, China Baorong Chi Professor of Norman Bethune Health Science Center of Jilin University, Changchun, China Yiqun Hu Vice Chancellor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China Yang Ke Professor of Peking University Health Science Center, former Vice President of Peking University, Beijing, China Ming Kuang Vice President of Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China Mengfeng Li President of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China Hongbing Shen President of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China Xuehong Wan Professor of West China Medical Center, Vice President of Graduate School of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China Hong Yan President of Xi'an Jiaotong University Health Science Center, Vice President of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China Guoqiang Chen (Chair) Chancellor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Vice President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

Changes of air quality during the pandemic and airborne transmission issues.

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 1 000 000 people within nine months in 2020. The world is changed as the cities were locked down, the traffic reduced, and people forced to work from home and keep social distance. These controlling measures also resulted in drastic reduction of the emission of many air pollutants, providing researchers an unprecedented large-scale natural experiment in examining how the air quality would respond to a strong forcing. In this panel discussion held on 22 September 2020, five experts gathered to discuss their observations and analyses, as well as the current understanding and misconception about airborne transmission. This Forum article is dedicated to Prof. Martin Williams of the Imperial College London, who intended to join the panel discussion but passed away one day before it. Guy Brasseur Professor of Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany Junji Cao Professor of Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Aijun Ding Dean and Professor of School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, China Lidia Morawska Professor of Queensland University of Technology, Australia Tong Zhu (Chair) Dean and Professor of College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, China.

A forum on synthetic biology: meet the great challenges with new technology.

Synthetic biology aims to redesign and reconstruct living systems for understanding life or for useful real-world applications. In the past two decades, scientists have been able to use engineered living systems to produce many kinds of products from bioplastics to drugs, to construct a minimal bacterium with a fully synthetic genome and to store huge amount of information within a cell. And in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, the synthetic biology community became one of the major forces to develop effective diagnostic approaches as well as the drugs and vaccines, to rapidly cope with this great challenge with the state-of-the-art technologies in their hands. In this panel discussion held on 3rd August 2020, eleven pioneering synthetic biologists from six countries across four continents gathered to discuss the development trend, challenges and biosafety issues concerning synthetic biology. George Church Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, USA Paul Freemont Professor of Structural Biology in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College and a member of the Science Advisory Board of Tierra Biosciences, UK Akihiko Kondo Professor in School of Science, Technology and Innovation, and Department of Chemical Science and Engineering at Kobe University, Japan Christina Smolke Professor of Bioengineering and of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and CEO of Antheia Inc., USA Xian-En Zhang Professor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Chenli Liu (Chair) Professor and Director of Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Jim Collins Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, USA Jay Keasling Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, USA Sang Yup Lee Dean of KAIST Institutes and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea Claudia Vickers Director of the Future Science Platform in Synthetic Biology at Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia Guoping Zhao Professor at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.