A student of hope

The campus was empty then and there was not much to eat at the university canteen. Shan had to move heavy lab equipment by herself.

"Back in January 2020, when students weren't allowed to return to campus, Tsinghua gave special approval to allow four members of our team to join me at the lab. Without them, our progress would have been slow," Shan says.

At that time, researchers and experts were studying COVID-19 in many places.

"It was like blind people trying to guess an elephant's body parts. We were all competing and, at the same time, we were also trying to verify each other's findings," Shan says.

The Tsinghua team's efforts drew public attention. President Xi Jinping visited the university on March 2.

"He talked to each member of our lab. He asked whether my experiment showed that the antibody worked on the coronavirus, and I said 'yes'," Shan recalls. "His words to us inspired me and encouraged me to continue our study."

Shan's work was to identify potent neutralizing antibodies from infected and convalescing patients.