He was elected as Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007. He graduated from Nankai University in 1962, and he was the scholar in 1979-1981 at MIT, visiting professor in 1995 at Harvard University. He was a board member of Organometallics, Chin. J. Chem. and Acta Chim. Sin. He is a member of the academic committee of State Key Laboratory of Elemento-Organic Chemistry and State Key Laboratory of Organometallic Chemistry. His research interests are focused on transition metal clusters, fullerene complexes, biomimetic models for hydrogenases and electro/photocatalytic H2 production. He has published more than 300 academic papers, which are widely cited by academia at home and abroad.

His research team has developed a variety of synthetic methods for preparing a series of novel [FeFe]-, [NiFe]- and [Fe]-hydrogenase model complexes. Besides structures and physico-chemical properties, the H2 (a clean and renewable energy source) production function catalyzed by such biomimetic models has been systematically studied.