Wei-Dong Zhang, Professor at the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, isolates compounds from plants and elucidates their structures and biological activity. 

What inspired you to become a scientist? 

My curiosity into nature. 

What was your motivation behind the work described in your ChemComm article? 

The plants of Abies genus are widely distributed around the world. We believe there must be something intrinsic among these species in addition to the morphology similarity. 

Why did you choose ChemComm to publish your work? 

When obtaining some exciting results, we would like to share our work with the other researchers all over the world as soon as possible. Chemical Communications is a high quality, high impact journal with the shortest publication times and worldwide readership.  

Where do you see your research heading next? 

Currently, we will continue to focus on this plant. In future, our research team will systematically study on other Abies  genus occurring in China, and then on those distributed all over the world if possible. 

What do enjoy doing in your spare time? 

Playing basketball with my son and staying with my family. 

If you could not be a scientist, but could be anything else, what would you be? 

I would be a teacher. 

Interviewed by Mary Badcock