Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek, and Chinese geoscientist "Deep diver" Du Mengran have been named to the journal Nature's annual "Nature's 10" list, which highlights ten key figures behind some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs by 2025.
The two were recognized for driving the development of advanced, large-scale AI models and pioneering deep-sea exploration that revealed some of the deepest animal ecosystems ever observed on Earth.
In its report on Liang, the journal Nature said that his company, DeepSeek, shocked the AI world in January with the launch of its sophisticated and cost-effective R1 model. The journal noted that the move immediately demonstrated that the United States was not as far behind in AI as many experts had thought.
The article about Du highlighted his role in pioneering dives into the hadal zone, the deepest layer of the ocean, more than six kilometers deep. At the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, northeast of Japan, he and his colleagues discovered "the deepest animal ecosystem ever seen on Earth."
According to the journal Nature, this year's "Nature's 10" list reflects a diverse range of scientific endeavors and societal challenges, from astronomy and deep-sea research to biomedicine and research integrity and public health policy to artificial intelligence. Overall, the findings demonstrate how advances at both the largest and smallest scales in nature, as well as behind-the-scenes efforts in research integrity and health policy, are shaping science and society in 2025.
