General Assemblies of Members of CAS and CAE Opened in Beijing

On June 5, the 13th General Assembly of Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the 8th General Assembly of Members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) opened at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Chinese President Hu Jintao was present at the opening ceremony and gave a significant speech.

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council, President Hu expressed warmly congratulations to the General Assemblies of CAS and CAE Members and sincere greetings to the members of CAS and CAE as well as nationwide S&T researchers.

In his speech delivered at the conference, Hu stressed that building China into an innovative nation is a strategic decision made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in accordance with the purpose of building a moderate prosperous society and opening up a new perspective for socialism with the Chinese characteristics. In terms of the world S&T development, science and technology, especially the strategic hi-tech, was playing a decisive role in the economic and social growth and have become the focus of competition in comprehensive national strength. We must strive hard to keep pace with the international development by speeding up the home-grown innovation, so as to improve the national core competitiveness, and to win development initiatives and maintain such momentum in the fierce world competition.
We must persist with the strategic thought that the human resources are always ranked the first priority and make every effort to build a huge innovation oriented S&T talent team so as to make the S&T modernization the driving force of the great revitalization of the Chinese nation.

President Hu emphasized that internationally top-ranked S&T talents, world master scientists and S&T leaders will not only foster high profile and highly innovative S&T talents and teams, but also make significant S&T achievements that are cutting edge on the world arena and catalyze companies and brand new industries characterized by strong compositeness. To cultivate innovation oriented S&T talents, first we must pay close attention to fostering such talents, in particular, a great number of young and middle aged S&T leaders.

Seven Scientists Elected as Foreign Members of CAS

Seven scientists from three countries were elected as Foreign Members of CAS as a result of voting by all Members of CAS at the plenary session of the 13th General Assembly of Members of CAS. The newly elected has brought the total number of Foreign Members of CAS to 51. A brief profile of the newly elected foreign members is as follows:
Zhores I. Alferov, vice president, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS); professor and director of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, RAS; Moscow (Russia);

• Klaus Von Klitzing, professor and director, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics, Stuttgart (Germany);
• Peter J. Stang, distinguished professor and dean, College of Science, University of Utah, Utah (USA);
• Nam-Hai Chua, professor and head, Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology, the Rockefeller University, New York (Nationality: Singapore);
• Shu Chien; professor of bioengineering and medicine as wells as director of Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering, the University of California, San Diego (USA);
• Robert E. Dickinson, professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (USA);
• Grigorian Samvel Samvelovich, professor, Moscow State Lomonosov University (Russia)-2