Changxia Yuan and Yu Lu have been granted the 2011 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad by China Scholarship Council (CSC). This award was founded by the Chinese government in 2003 with the purpose of rewarding the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas. Only those with outstanding performance in their PhD studies are considered by the award selection panel and no more than 500 young talents are granted the award each year all over the world.
Chiangxia Yuan is in the Siegel group. Yu Lu is a recent graduate from the Krische group and now works for Dow AgroSciences.