Philipp Khaitovich, a Russian scientist specializing in the study of the human brain, has met President Xi Jinping three times.

"It may sound like a cliche but I would say it's undoubtedly the most impressive China-related story for me," said Khaitovich, director of the Max Planck Society Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai.

The 43-year-old, who has pushed boundaries to discover why humans are smarter than other species and how the aging process happens, attended meetings for foreign experts with Xi three times - first at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, then in Shanghai, and finally in Moscow.