Known as the "Chinese version of the Nobel Prize" is here! These scientists won the 2024 Future Science Prize

The Future Science Prize Committee announced the list of winners for 2024 on August 16. Deng Hongkui won the "Life Science Award" for his outstanding work in using chemical methods to reprogram somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells and change cell fate and state; Zhang Tao and Li Yadong won the "Material Science Award" for their pioneering contributions to the development and application of "single-atom catalysis"; Sun Binyong won the "Mathematics and Computer Science Award" for his outstanding contributions to Lie group representation theory.

2024 Future Science Prize - Life Sciences Award Winner

The winner of the "Life Science Award" is Deng Hongkui, who pioneered the use of chemical methods to reprogram somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells and change cell fate and state.

Deng Hongkui has made pioneering contributions in the field of cell reprogramming. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues discovered that fibroblasts can be converted into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) through four transcription factors, a discovery that marked a new era of regenerative medicine. However, the transcription factor overexpression method is difficult to precisely manipulate the reprogramming effect and may lead to random gene integration and potential oncogene expression, thus limiting its application.

Deng Hongkui pioneered the development of methods to convert fibroblasts into iPSCs (chemically induced pluripotent stem cells, or CiPSCs) using chemical small molecules. He demonstrated that CiPSCs can be successfully used to generate fertile mice (2013) and revealed the molecular pathways for generating CiPSCs (2015, 2018). Deng Hongkui also successfully established human CiPSC induction technology (2022a, 2023) and demonstrated that pancreatic islets derived from human CiPSCs can improve diabetes in non-human primates (2022b), showing the great clinical potential of CiPSCs. Deng Hongkui's original work has opened up new avenues for cell reprogramming and will have a broad and far-reaching impact on the development of stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

Deng Hongkui was born in Beijing in 1963. He is a Boya Chair Professor at Peking University and a leading scientist at Changping Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995 and then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at New York University.

The chemical industry has a significant impact on all aspects of modern society, and catalysis is the core technology of today's chemical industry. The development of efficient catalysts and corresponding feasible synthesis methods is one of the most important research goals of chemistry and chemical engineering. Solid-phase metal catalysts, usually nanoparticle catalysts, are widely used in industrial production. In order to develop heterogeneous metal catalysts with optimal metal atom utilization and uniform catalytic sites and patterns, since the 1960s, there have been reports on the development of catalysts that disperse metals on the surface of carriers with single metal atoms as heterogeneous catalytic centers, but this field has not been developed. The reason is that the lack of simple, feasible and widely applicable single-atom heterogeneous catalyst preparation and scientific characterization methods are the key factors restricting the development of this field.

In 2011, Zhang Tao, Li Jun and Liu Jingyue reported a heterogeneous catalyst in which platinum (Pt) was embedded in iron oxide (FeOx) in the form of isolated metal single atoms. This study established the synthesis and identification of a simple and easy solid-phase catalyst with single-atom platinum as the active catalytic site, and demonstrated that the catalyst has excellent catalytic activity and selectivity. Zhang Tao and his collaborators named the catalytic function promoted by this type of catalyst "Single-Atom Catalysis (SAC)". They then demonstrated that "Single-Atom Catalysis" can be extended to a variety of metals, supports and catalytic reactions. This landmark original research triggered the explosive development of "Single-Atom Catalysis", which quickly grew into an active emerging catalysis research field.

Li Yadong and his collaborators systematically developed methods for the synthesis of single-atom catalysts that are designable, controllable, and universal. These methods can provide single-atom catalysts with defined morphologies and complexing environments. These methods have enabled the large-scale synthesis of single-atom catalysts with high loadings of central metals and uniform microstructures, laying the foundation for the application of such catalysts in industrial production. These methods are widely used in the synthesis of catalysts with various functions, thus promoting the development of single-atom catalysis in the fields of chemical engineering, materials, energy, and environment, making it more influential.

The pioneering work of Zhang Tao and Li Yadong has opened a door to understanding the active sites of heterogeneous metal catalysts and provided an effective way to regulate solid-phase catalysts with atomic precision. The single-atom catalysis research they led has become the most cutting-edge field of heterogeneous catalysis. Their research results have promoted the green, environmentally friendly, efficient and energy-saving industrial production of bulk chemicals such as vinyl chloride, acetic acid, and propanol, thus demonstrating the potential of single-atom catalysis to contribute to the sustainable development of human society.

[1] Nat. Chem. 2011, 3, 634-641.

[2] Nat. Rev. Chem., 2018, 2, 65-81.

[3] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 10800–10805.

[4] Chem. Rev. 2020, 120, 11900–11955.

Zhang Tao was born in Shaanxi, China in 1963 and received his Ph.D. degree from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1989. He is currently a researcher at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Li Yadong was born in Anhui, China in 1964 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998. He is currently a professor at Tsinghua University.

2024 Future Science Prize - Mathematics and Computer Science Award Winner

Sun Binyong, winner of the "Mathematics and Computer Science Award", was recognized for his outstanding contributions to Lie group representation theory.

2024 Future Science Prize - Material Science Award Winner

The winners of the "Material Science Award" are Zhang Tao and Li Yadong, in recognition of their pioneering contributions to the development and application of "single-atom catalysis".

Sun Binyong has made important achievements in the field of Lie group representation theory, especially in the simplex theorem of classical groups, theta correspondence theory, and non-zero hypotheses in Rankin-Selberg convolution.

Lie group representation theory is one of the foundations of modern mathematics. It originated in physics, is the basis of the Langlands program, and is crucial to many key advances in number theory, including the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

Sun Binyong's first contribution was to establish the single property of the representation of canonical Lie groups. In the compact case, this problem was originally studied by E. Cartan and H. Weyl. Sun Binyong and his collaborator Zhu Chengbo generalized it to the non-compact case and reduced it to the study of invariant distributions. Their innovative method solved this long-standing conjecture, laid the foundation for the relative representation theory of canonical Lie groups, and provided important evidence for the Gan-Gross-Prasad basic conjecture.

His second major contribution is the theory of θ correspondences, which is one of the important methods for studying automorphic forms between different groups. Binyong Sun and Chengbo Zhu proved the conjecture proposed by Kudla and Rallis in the 1990s about the detailed information of the first non-zero θ lifting in certain towers, which significantly promoted the development of this field.

Sun Binyong's third important achievement is to prove that the periodic integral of the cohomology test vector in the Rankin-Selberg convolution is non-zero. This result was originally proposed by Kazhdan and Mazur in the 1970s. Sun Binyong's work has studied it in detail, proved its non-zeroness and performed specific calculations, solving a long-standing problem in this field.

Sun Binyong was born in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, China in 1976 and received his PhD from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2004. He worked at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences for many years and is currently a professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Mathematics, Zhejiang University.

The Future Science Prize was established in 2016 and was jointly initiated by scientists and entrepreneurs. The Future Science Prize focuses on original basic scientific research and rewards scientists (regardless of nationality) who have made outstanding scientific achievements in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

The winning work must meet the following conditions:

(1) Producing a huge international impact;

(ii) be original, of lasting importance or have stood the test of time;

(3) The work was completed mainly in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The nationality of the applicant is not limited.

The Future Science Prize currently has three major awards: "Life Science Award", "Material Science Award" and "Mathematics and Computer Science Award", with a single prize of approximately RMB 7.2 million (equivalent to US$1 million).

Since 2016, a total of 39 winners have been selected for the Future Science Prize. They are all highly accomplished scientists from basic and applied research fields such as life sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computers, who have made original research work that has had a huge international impact.

The 2024 Future Science Prize Week will be held in Hong Kong from October 30 to November 3. More than 70 world-class scientists from around the world will discuss cutting-edge scientific issues and share the most cutting-edge scientific information and forward-looking perspectives at the Science Summit; the Science and Technology Forum and the Annual Meeting of the Asian Young Scientists Fund Project will focus on promoting interdisciplinary exchanges and innovative discussions; the Youth Dialogue with Winners will be held at the Hong Kong Science Museum, and the winning scientists will share their scientific research journey and inspire scientific dreams; the most anticipated highlight moment - the Future Science Prize Awards Ceremony, will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center.