Professor Zhiquan Shen, is a Polymer Chemistry Scientist and Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (1995) who made important contributions to Rare Earth Coordination Polymerization. She graduated and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Department of Chemistry of Shanghai University in 1952. She had worked at Suzhou University in 1952-1962 and at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1962 - 1979. Since 1980, she has been working in Zhejiang University, promoted to professor in 1984 and further elected as a Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995. She has served as chair of the Department of Chemistry, head of the Polymer Chemistry Institute, consultant member of the Chinese Chemical Society, member of the State Council Degree Committee, member of Evaluation Group of the National Natural Science Foundation, and vice chairman of Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology. She is currently a Professor of Department of Polymer Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University. In the meanwhile, she is an editorial board member for more than 10 journals and advisory board member of National Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering and National Key Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Physics. Professor Shen worked as visiting associate professor at Akron University, U.S.A. from 1982-1983, and as visiting professor at RWTH Aachen, Germany in 1989. She has visited and given lectures in over 20 institutes and universities of more than ten countries.
    Professor Shen has long been engaged in the fundamental research of polymer chemistry and materials science, and mainly focused on transition metal and rare earth coordination polymerization. During the 1960s, she was the first one in China to investigate "the cis polybutadiene rubber by trinary nickel catalytic system" and had made a special and great contribution for the establishment of Chinese polybutadiene rubber industry; thus she was the major awardee of the Special Class Prize of National Science and Technology Progress of China in 1985 and she has made an outstanding contribution for the development of "rare earth coordination polymerization for rubber" in world. During the 1960s and 1970s, she carried out and led the research for rare earth coordination polymerization and related rubber project; consequently, she was awarded the Second Class Prize of National Natural Science Prizes of China in 1982. During the 1980s and 1990s, she and her group have conducted systematic studies on the polymerization of acetylene and its derivatives (terminal alkynes, phenyl acetylene), oxirane (ethylene oxide, propylene oxide, epichlorohydrin), thiirane, octene, lactide, lactone, acrylates and copolymerization of CO2-oxirane, styrene-maleic anhydride, styrene-acrylonitrile, oxirane-maleic anhydride by rare earth catalysts. With a large number of innovations, she was awarded the Third Class Prize of National Natural Science of China in 1993 and several prizes of the National Educational Commission and Zhejiang Province, First Class Prize of Guanghua Science and Technology in 1994, and the Science and Technology Progress Prize of Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation in 2001. Professor Shen has authored over 400 scientific publications including several book chapters. She has been nominated as the National Distinguished Woman Worker in 1993 and one of the Ten Most Distinguished Women in Zhejiang Province in 1995, won the Model Worker Medal of National Education System in 1995 and the People’s Teacher Award in 1998, and she was awarded as one of the Ten Most Distinguished Women in China in 1998 and won the National Teacher Award for Outstanding Ethics in 2001.