Pan Borong, male, born in January 1946, Han, from Tianjin, is a second-grade professor and Honorary Director of the Turpan Desert Botanical Garden. He has served as Party Secretary, Deputy Director and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS, Director of the Turpan Desert Botanical Garden and doctoral supervisor. He serves on the Chinese National Committee for DIVERSITAS, the Biodiversity Committee of CAS and the expert committee of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation; is an adviser to the Ex-situ Conservation Committee of the China Wild Plant Conservation Association, the Botanical Gardens Branch of the Botanical Society of China and the Ethnoecology Committee of the Ecological Society of China; a standing council member of the Xinjiang Botanical Society, the Xinjiang Ecological Society and the Xinjiang Association of Senior Scientists; and Honorary President of the Xinjiang Society for Energy Saving and Emission Reduction and the Xinjiang Botanical Society.

He has long worked on the ecology and botany of arid lands, producing pioneering results on large-scale sand-fixing afforestation with little irrigation in extremely arid regions, control of sand damage to farmland and highways, introduction and domestication of sand-fixing plants, use of desert plant resources, ex-situ conservation of rare and endangered desert plants, ethnobotany and plant taxonomy. He was named an outstanding expert with special contributions in Xinjiang in 1995 and receives the State Council special government allowance. He has led or taken part in more than 60 national and provincial projects and more than 20 award-winning research results, including a first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award for engineering technology research on the Tarim Desert Highway, the National Science Conference Award, third prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, and numerous awards from CAS, the Ministry of Forestry and Xinjiang for research on sand-fixing afforestation, desertification control, introduction of desert plants, the Flora Xinjiangensis (vols 1, 2 and 6), Tamaricaceae and desert biodiversity, biological soil crusts and ex-situ conservation of arid-land plant resources. He has contributed to many books on Xinjiang's deserts, sand control, forests, desertification and disasters, Chinese wild flowers, forage plants, rare plants, deserts and desert plants and the vascular flora of the Tianshan, published more than 200 papers and trained more than 30 doctoral and master's students. He received the China Senior Scientists Association Award (2017), the Lifetime Achievement Award of Chinese Botanical Gardens (2018) and the Outstanding Contribution Award for Science and Technology Progress of Xinjiang (2018).