Since 2020, worsening geopolitical tensions and China’s rising research capabilities have made the country increasingly attractive to overseas talent. As the U.S. imposed sanctions limiting China’s access to advanced semiconductors and manufacturing tools, more engineers, scientists and technology specialists have headed back to support the country’s drive for self-reliance, the South China Morning Post reported.

A 2025 study by Shenzhen-based Dongbi Data found that China had surpassed the U.S. in the number of top science and technology experts. China’s total climbed from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, while the U.S. figure dropped from 36,599 to 32,511 over the same period.

In this article, VnExpress International looks at several prominent chip engineers who have recently moved back to China.

Sun Nan

Chip expert Sun Nan. Photo courtesy of Tsinghua University

Sun returned to China in 2020 to join Tsinghua University after more than a decade in the U.S., where he built his career in integrated circuit design. His move drew wider attention in early 2025 when the Beijing-based university highlighted his work developing more than 50 advanced chips in just over four years.

According to a February 2025 post on Tsinghua’s social media account, Sun returned with the aim of "training chip professionals for China and solving the manufacturing problems of mid- and high-end chip technology."

Since joining the university, Sun and his team have worked on both scientific research and industrial applications, focusing on producing more reliable and efficient chips at lower cost. Their high-performance circuit design technologies have been integrated into chips used in power grids, high-speed rail, industrial measurement and control systems, instrumentation and electric vehicles.

Sun graduated from Tsinghua in 2006 as the top-ranked student in his major. He then pursued a doctorate in integrated circuit design at Harvard University before joining the University of Texas at Austin’s electrical and computer engineering department in 2011. He earned tenure in 2017 and remained there until May 2020.

Among his honors, Sun received the Career Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2013 and the New Frontier Award from the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society in 2020. In 2023, he was awarded the Beijing Youth May Fourth Medal, the highest honor given by the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to outstanding young professionals.

Su Fei

Chip engineer Su Fei. Photo courtesy of Tsinghua University

Chip engineer Su joined Tsinghua as a full-time professor in September 2025 after nearly two decades at U.S. chip giant Intel.

During his time in the U.S., he worked on improving the reliability, security and performance of advanced microprocessors used in devices ranging from smartphones to data centers.

A senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Su said he was "profoundly motivated" by opportunities to bridge academic research and industrial applications, the SCMP reported.

He contributed to the development of several IEEE standards and guided research collaborations between universities and industry through the Semiconductor Research Corporation. In 2021, he received the Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liaison Award for his leadership in research collaboration and student mentoring.

Su earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua before completing a PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, U.S., in 2006.

He joined Intel the same year and has also received multiple best paper awards, including from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration Design.

Shi Guojun

Semiconductor packaging expert Shi Guojun. Photo courtesy of University of California, Irvine, U.S.

Shi, a semiconductor packaging expert, left the University of California, Irvine after more than 20 years to join Chinese conductive materials company DK Electronic Materials, the company announced on March 6.

He now serves as chief strategic scientist and director of the Future Industry Research Institute, overseeing strategic planning in emerging industries with a focus on semiconductor memory.

Based in Yixing, Wuxi, eastern China, DK Electronic Materials is one of the world’s leading suppliers of photovoltaic metallization paste, with a global market share of around 25% last year.

Shi’s connection with the company dates back to 2017, when it donated U$1 million to establish a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine under his direction.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural meteorology at the Nanjing Institute of Meteorology in 1983, followed by a master’s degree in micrometeorology at the University of Guelph in Canada. He later shifted his research focus to materials science and completed a PhD in chemical engineering and materials science at the California Institute of Technology in 1992.

Shi has published more than 200 academic papers and became a tenured professor at UC Irvine. In 2010, he received the Outstanding Sustained Technical Contribution Award from the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Society, and was elected an IEEE fellow in 2011.

Jiang Jianfeng

Jiang, 30, returned to Peking University in March 2026 after about one and a half years in the U.S. to serve as a principal investigator, associate professor and PhD supervisor.

In an interview with China Science Communication, Jiang explained his decision to return: "Professor Peng Lianmao once said, ‘One should take root where the country needs strengthening and rise when the times demand it.’"

Peng, Jiang’s PhD adviser at Peking University, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the School of Electronics.

Jiang also told Peking University that his return was "not a momentary impulse, but rather a more natural choice," adding that the university's long-standing research foundation in low-dimensional electronics provided an opportunity to build a research team and conduct systematic, long-term work.

Jiang’s research focuses on two-dimensional semiconductor materials such as indium selenide, which could help overcome the physical limits of traditional silicon chips and support next-generation electronics.

After completing his PhD at Peking in June 2024 and a brief postdoctoral stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned to lead his own research group.

He has published in leading journals including "Science," "Nature" and "Nature Materials." His work includes demonstrating wafer-scale production of high-quality indium selenide films and developing new transistor architectures using two-dimensional semiconductor materials.