Meet draws top Chinese researchers

The largest bioscience conference ever held in Taiwan will open at Academia Sinica (中研院) today. The international symposium is sponsored by Academia Sinica, the National Health Research Institute and the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America.

Over 1,000 ethnic Chinese biotech researchers are slated to attend the event. Participants will include Steve Chu (朱棣文), a Chinese-American physicist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics; David Ho (何大一), who pioneered a cocktail treatment of drugs for fighting AIDS; and ethnic Chinese scientists from the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Australian, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

Chu will also give a lecture on Aug. 9 about "laser cooling and trapping," which is the topic that won him the Nobel Prize, along with William Phillips of the US and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of France, in 1997.

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will speak at the opening ceremony of the symposium. Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) will then lead all participants in a discussion on "international cooperation and competition in bioscientific research."

According to the Academia Sinica, it is estimated that participants will deliver some 170 speeches on 30 bioscience subjects, and 250 papers will be read during the five-day symposium.

As the biotech industry is regarded by the government as a newly emerging business sector for Taiwan, the Council for Economic Planning and Development has recently worked out a plan for the local industry, including setting up a joint biotech research center in the Nankang Software Park in suburban Taipei, establishing a biotech industrial park in eastern Taiwan, building an agricultural technology park in southern Taiwan, and forming an Asian biotech center in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan.