Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) was on Friday awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of programmable and applied synthesis of complex oligosaccharides and glycol-proteins.
After winning the prize, Wong said it should be credited to the education he received in Taiwan and the friendly environment Academia Sinica provides for cross-field cooperation.
Wong, who returned to Taiwan from the US to serve as director of the Genomics Research Center at Academia Sinica in 2003, said the institution provides the opportunities to develop anti-bacterial and anti-cancer drugs, and many other new findings, as well as helps facilitate cooperation among scientists from various disciplines and countries.
The Wolf Prize in the sciences is considered second in importance only to the Nobel Prize. More than 30 Wolf Prize recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in scientific fields, including medicine, physics and chemistry.
The prize has been awarded since 1978 by the Wolf Foundation, which was established in 1976 by Ricardo Wolf (1887-1981), an inventor, diplomat and philanthropist, and his wife, Francisca Subirana-Wolf (1900-1981), to promote science and art for the benefit of mankind.
It is awarded annually in six areas. In science, the fields are: agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, while in the arts, the prize rotates annually among architecture, music, painting and sculpture.
The prize in each area consists of a diploma and a cash award of US$100,000.
Wong is the third Taiwan-born scientist to have won the prize since 1991, when Academia Sinica academician Yang Hsiang-fa (楊祥發) was awarded the prize in agriculture. Academia Sinica academician Yau Shing-tung (丘成桐) was awarded the 2010 Wolf Foundation Prize in mathematics.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
BETTER SERVICE QUALITY: From Nov. 10, tickets with reserved seats would only be valid for the date, train and route specified on the ticket, THSRC said Starting on Nov. 10, high-speed rail passengers with reserved seats would be required to exchange their tickets to board an earlier train. Passengers with reserved seats on a specific train are currently allowed to board earlier trains on the same day and sit in non-reserved cars, but as this is happening increasingly often, and affecting quality of travel and ticket sales, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) announced that it would be canceling the policy on Nov. 10. It is one of several new measures launched by THSRC chairman Shih Che (史哲) to improve the quality of service, it said. The company also said
RSS