Future Science Prize Committee announced the winners of 2018 in Beijing on September 8. Dawei Ma, Xiaoming Feng, Qilin Zhou won the Future Science Prize in physical sciences for inventing new catalysts and chemical reactions, which opened avenues for synthesizing organic molecules, especially pharmaceutical molecules.. Jiayang Li, Longping Yuan, Qifa Zhang won the Prize in life sciences for their pioneering contributions in producing high-yield, superior-quality rice through systematic study of molecular mechanisms associated with specific rice features and application of novel approaches in rice breeding.. Burn J. Lin won the prize in mathematics and computer science, for pioneering immersion lithography to continuously scale nano-metric integrated circuit fabrication, reviving and extending Moore’s law for multiple generations.
The Future Science Prize is a privately-funded science award initiated by a group of scientists and entrepreneurs. It was established in 2015 to award scientists whose original research work, mostly completed in the Mainland of China, Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan, has made significant impact in the international science communities and passed the test of time, regardless of their nationalities, genders or ages. By promoting basic research and scientific talents in the region, the hope is to inspire its society's love for science, respect for scientists, and attention for scientific and technological developments, and to improve the scientific literacy of Chinese citizens.
The nomination and selection process of the Prize was established in according with the Nobel Prize system: the Science Committee of the Future Science Prize invites international experts as nominators. After receiving confidential nominations, the committee solicits evaluation letters from international experts in the relevant fields of the nominated work. Based on the evaluations, the committee votes to select the final award winners. A regulatory committee, consisting of Xiqing Gaofrom the School of Law at Tsinghua University and KPMG, supervises the entire award selection process.
The current Science Committee consists of 21 leading scientists: Zhenan Bao from Stanford University，Frank Changfrom National Chiao Tung University，Hong Ding from Institute of Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences，Xinnian Dong from Duke University，Chuan He from University of Chicago, Fei-Fei Li from Stanford University, Kai Li from Princeton University, Jian-Shu Li from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Yong-Jun Liufrom Sanofi Group，Liqun Luofrom Stanford University, Shude Mao from Tsinghua University，Xiangdong Ji from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Yi Raofrom Peking University, Chi-Wang Shufrom Brown University, Gang Tianfrom Peking University, Xiaodong Wang from Beijing National Institute of Biological Sciences, Xiao-Gang Wenfrom Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jeff Xia from Northwestern University, Sunney Xie from Peking University, Peidong Yang from University of California at Berkeley and Jin-Quan Yu from Scripps Research Institute.
The cash award for the Future Science Prize in each category is 6.8 million Yuan (1 million US dollars), donated by four individuals. The donors for life sciences are James Ding, Robin Li,Neil Shenand Lei Zhang. The donors for the category of physical sciences are Feng Deng, Yajun Wu,Ying Wuand Bob Xu. The donors for mathematics and computer science are William Ding,Jason Jiang,Pony Maand Victor Wang.
The award ceremony of the 2018 Future Science Prize will be held in Beijing on November 18th, the last day of the 2-day Future Forum (F²) Science Symposium.（end）
