7 scientists awarded Shaw Prize in Hong Kong

HONG KONG -- Seven scientists were awarded the Shaw Prize Award here on Sunday for their prominent work in the prize's three categories.

The Astronomy prize was awarded in equal shares to Matthew Bailes from the Australian Research Council, Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin from West Virginia University in the United States, for the discovery of fast radio bursts. The three laureates described the first fast radio burst found by human beings in a research paper written in 2007.

The Life Science and Medicine prize went to Patrick Cramer from the Max Planck Society in Germany, and Eva Nogales from the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States, for pioneering structural biology that enabled visualization, at the level of individual atoms, of the protein machines responsible for gene transcription, one of life's fundamental processes.

The Mathematical Sciences prize was split between Vladimir Drinfeld from the University of Chicago in the United States, and Shing-Tung Yau from Tsinghua University. Drinfeld participated in the launching of the geometric Langlands program, and Yau worked on mathematical problems arising from general relativity and string theory.

Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) John Lee said at the awarding ceremony that Hong Kong is blessed with some of the world's top universities and their research institutes and the talented academics here strive to bring about societal changes in various fields of scientific endeavor to ultimately benefit humanity, from life science and medicine to robotics and moon rovers.

With the support of the country's 14th Five-Year Plan, Hong Kong is determined to develop into an international innovation and technology center, said Lee.

"The HKSAR government is committed to creating an innovation ecosystem that is conducive to research and development, scientific breakthroughs, and sustainable commercialization of research outcomes," he said.

Established in 2002, the Shaw Prize, an international recognition of remarkable scientific achievements based in Hong Kong, is managed under the Shaw Prize Foundation and has been awarded annually since 2004.