In the afternoon of May 12, 2009, the seventh award ceremony of the Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Peony Award is held in Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Shen Xiaoming, Vice Mayor of Shanghai, Chen Kehong, Municipal Science and Technology Secretary of the Party Committee, Shou Ziqi, Director of the Municipal Science and Technology Committee, and Cheng Shandong, Deputy Governor of the Shanghai Branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China attended the ceremony and presented the awards to the six winners. Researcher Ma Dawei of our institute won the Peony Prize and did the speech on behalf of the winners.

This Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Peony Award received 41 candidates that were in line with the declaration conditions; the candidates were evaluated and selected by six disciplinary review groups, and then trough the careful evaluation and voting by the Peony Award Council and approved by Shanghai Science and Technology Committee; and at lastly decided to award the Seventh Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Peony Prize to the six scientists Jing Yipeng of the Shanghai Observatory of the CAS, Ma Dawei of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the CAS, Zhu Xueliang of the Shanghai Institute of Life Sciences of the CAS, Jiang Hualiang of the Shanghai Medicinal Institute of the CAS, Chen Yihan of Tongji University and Liao Shijun of Shanghai Jiaotong University.

The Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Peony Award was established in 1994, which was the social forces funded municipal science and technology award, and mainly used for awarding Shanghai City's middle aged and young scientific workers who achieved excellent research achievements on the aspects of basic research of natural science and applied basic research areas; it is held once every two years, for the 6 disciplinary groups of mathematics, chemistry, information, biotechnology and agriculture, medicine and pharmacy, materials and engineering, and the winners of each election should not be more than 6 persons. This year, the original Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Peony Award Council was carried on with adjustment, and Academician Dai Lixin of our institute was employed as the councilor. Six Peony Award election activities were successfully held before, and altogether 30 middle-aged and young brainpowers won the prize, which had a very good response in the society, provided a broad stage to the middle aged and young scientists’ coming to the fore, and created a good atmosphere for encouraging the scientists to engage in basic research and explore the unknown world with courage.

Scientific Research Management Office