Chih-Ta Yen  was born on November 1, 1917, in Nantong, Jiangsu. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Southwest Associated University in 1941, received his Ph.D. degree from the Université de Strasbourg in 1949, and returned to China in 1952. He served as a professor at the Department of Mathematics of Nankai University and a professor at the Nankai Institute of Mathematics. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993. He died of illness on April 30, 1999.

Chih-Ta Yen is mainly engaged in the research of Lie groups, Lie algebras, differential geometry, and gear meshing theory. During his college years, he, joint with Professor S. S. Chern, published a paper on a basic formula of motions in integral geometry, which was called “Chern-Yen formula” and is still widely used today. He was the first mathematician in the world to calculate Betti numbers of special simple Lie groups. With his efforts, a series of achievements have been obtained on the study of real semi-simple Lie groups, Lie algebras, and symmetric space theory. Yen’s new method on the classification of real semi-simple Lie algebras greatly simplified the relevant work of famous French mathematician Cartan, and satisfactorily solved the classification problem of the non-compact symmetric spaces proposed by Cartan. He also applied the theory of differential geometry to gear meshing theory, expounded many important concepts, and deduced the "induced curvature formula", which has promoted the development of China’s machinery industry.

He also served as a member of the 3rd and 4th Councils of the Chinese Mathematical Society, and a representative of the 10th and 11th People’s Congress of Tianjin (1983-1993).

Mo-Lin Ge was born in Beijing in 1938. He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics.

His main research fields include: mathematical physics (Yang-Mills theory, applications of Yang-Baxter eqution to quantum entanglements), propagation of electromagnetic wave in complex media and application of compressive sensing to imaging super-weak signal.

Yiming Long was born in October 1948 in Chongqing. He is a professor at the Chern Institute of Mathematics. He received his master's degree from Nankai University in 1981. He received his Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987. In 2007, he was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was elected as a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He once served as the president of the Tianjin Mathematical Society, vice president of the Tianjin Science and Technology Association, vice president of the Chinese Mathematical Society, member of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union, and dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences of Nankai University, as well as the director of Chern Institute of Mathematics from January 2008 to July 2012.

He is mainly engaged in the research of Hamiltonian dynamics, variational methods, symplectic geometry, Riemannian and Finsler geometry, etc.

He is a 45-minute invited speaker at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians. He has received many awards and honors, such as Dissertation Award by Sigma-Xi Research Association, Wisconsin Chapter (1987), the Outstanding Young Scholar Award of Hong Kong Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation (1996), Shiing-Shen Chern Mathematics Award (1997-98), and Grand prize of Baosteel Education Fundation Outstanding Teacher Award (1998), the First Prize of National Award for Science and Technology Progress by Ministry of Education (2003), the Second Prize of National Award in Natural Sciences by the State Council of China (2004), TWAS Prize in Mathematics by TWAS (2004), Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress by Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (2012), as well as the Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2013), Loo-Keng Hua Mathematics Award (2017). As well as honorary titles including Tianjin Model Worker, National Education System Model Worker, National Model Teacher, National Outstanding Science and Technology Worker, and was awarded the National May 1st Labor Medal.

Many of his graduate students have received honors and awards, such as the Distinguished Young Scholars of the National Natural Science Foundation, Excellent Young Scholars of the National Natural Science Foundation, National 100 Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award, and Zhong Jiaqing Mathematics Award.

Weiping Zhang was born in March 1964 in Shanghai. He graduated from Fudan University in 1985. He received his master's degree from the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1988. He received a Ph.D. from the Université Paris-Sud, France in 1993. In 2001, he was elected as a Fellow of the The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and in 2007 he was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He used to be the director of Chern Institute of Mathematics.

Weiping Zhang is mainly engaged in the study of Atiyah-Singer index theory and its application in differential geometry, geometry and analysis on manifolds. He has achieved a series of outstanding success in international filed.

What is more, in 2002, he was invited to give a 45-minute invitation report to the International Congress of Mathematicians; He received many awards and honors such as the Outstanding Young Scholar Award of Hong Kong Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation (1995), the Distinguished Young Scholar of the National Natural Science Foundation (1995), TWAS Prize in Mathematics by TWAS (2000), the First Prize of the National Award for Science and Technology Progress by Ministry of Education (2000), China's Top Ten Outstanding Youths (2001), Shiing-Shen Chern Mathematics Award (2003), National advanced workers (2005), the Second Prize of National Award for Natural Sciences by the State Council of China (2005) and many other honors and awards.

William Y.C. Chen was born in Nanchong, Sichuan Province in March 1964. He graduated from the College of Computer Science of Sichuan University in 1984, from the College of Mathematics of Sichuan University in 1987, and received his Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991. In 2011 he was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and in 2015 elected as a member of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He was previously the vice president of Nankai University, vise president of Tianjin Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and was elected as the vice director of the standing committee of The People's Congress of Tianjin in January 2018.

William Y.C. Chen's research interests focus on classical combinatorial mathematics, algebraic combinatorics, and application of combinatorial mathematics in biology and physics. He successfully established connection between context-free grammar and differential operator, and applied it in research of combinatorial counting problem, which laid thefoundation for a kind of classical umbral calculus. He solved with co-researchers the open problem of Rogers-Ramanujan identities proposed by Andrews, and solved the problem of Cayley formula proposed by Shor and Stanley's zrank conjecture on skew partitions. He also has promoted important progress with co-researchers on research of pseudoknot in computational biology by proving the property of symmetric distribution of nested number and crossing number in sets partition; established connection between Schwinger's formula and MacMahon's theorem with co-researchers by appling combinatorics to research of quantum theoryo f angular momentum, and obtained the interpolation formula of symmetric function by proving the conjecture on symmetry of skew factorial Schur function.

William Y.C. Chen has received many honours and awards, including the Distinguished Young Scholar of the National Natural Science Foundation (1994), the Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1997), the China Youth May 4th Medal (1998), Science & Technology Award for Chinese Youth (1998), Science & Technology Award for Outstanding Young Scholar by Hong Kong Qiu Shi Science and Technologies Foundation (1999) and Shiing-Shen Chern Mathematics Award (2011).