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2010 National S&T Award Announced

The National Science and Technology Award Conference was solemnly held on Jan.14 by the State Council. State leaders Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang were present at the conference and conferred the awards to the winners. Hu Jintao, President of PRC firstly awarded the commendation certificates to Shi Changxu, a renowned materials scientist, Member of CAS and CAE, Honorary Director of CAS Institute of Metals Research, and Wang Zhenyi, Member of CAE, a tenured professor of the Ruijin Hospital, subsidiary of the School of Medicine of the Shanghai Jiaotong University and a well-known expert in hematology, the winners of the State Supreme science and Technology Award for 2010. Afterwards, Hu Jintao and other state leaders granted awards to the winners of State Natural Science Award, State Technology Innovation Award, State Science and Technology Progress Award and International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. CAS won 22 items of the State Science and Technology Award for 2010, including 10 awards in natural sciences, accounting for one third of the total awards, 2 items of State Technology Innovation Award and 10 items of Science and Technology Progress Award, including a Popular Science Award. Roger M. Bonnet, an internationally renowned expert in space physics and Director of International Space Science Institute, and Gerhard Boerner, an internationally renowned astrophysicist, recommended by CAS were honored with State Science and Technology Cooperation Award for 2010.

BAI Chunli to Lead CAS

Prof. Bai Chunli, a well-known chemist and leading scientist in nano-science, has recently taken the presidency of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Prof. Bai succeeded Prof. Lu Yongxiang as the new leader of China’s major think-tank and research institution. Prof. Bai Chunli has been Executive Vice-President of CAS since 2004. He has also served as Vice-President of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), President of the Graduate University of CAS (GUCAS), Director of the Academic Division of Chemistry and Member of the Executive Committee of the Presidium of the Academic Divisions of CAS.

Prof. Bai graduated from the Department of Chemistry, Peking University in 1978 and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the CAS Institute of Chemistry in 1981 and 1985 respectively. From 1985 to 1987, he worked with the California Institute of Technology, U.S.A. in the field of physical chemistry as a post-doctorate associate and visiting scholar. After he returned to China in 1987, he continued his research at the CAS Institute of Chemistry. From 1991 to 1992, he worked as a visiting professor at the Tohoku University in Japan.

His research areas include the structure and properties of polymer catalysts, X-ray crystallography of organic compounds, molecular mechanics and EXAFS research on electro-conducting polymers. In the mid-1980s, he shifted his research to the fields of scanning tunneling microscopy and molecular nanotechnology.

Prof. Bai has a long list of scientific publications and has won more than twenty prestigious awards and prizes for his academic achievements. Because of his academic achievements, he was elected Member of CAS and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) in 1997. He is also a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and honorary doctor or professor of several foreign universities. Prof. Bai also serves as Chief Scientist for the National Steering Committee for Nanoscience and Technology and was the Founding Director of China National Center for Nanoscience and Technology.

Prof. Bai is also Vice President of TWAS, Member of the Executive Committee of IUPAC (2008-2009), and Member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of JACS, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials and Chemical Physics Letters.