Shanghai, Nov. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 4th World Laureates Forum (WLF), that kicked off on Monday, has brought together more than 130 top global scientists, including 68 Nobel Prize laureates, who will participate through webinars and offline meetings in Shanghai.
Featuring basic science promotion, international cooperation and youth development, the three-day event was co-organized by the World Laureates Association (WLA) and China Association for Science and Technology.
Besides focusing on the theme of open science, this year's forum also attached great importance to the international scientific and technological cooperation.
Randy Schekman, the 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine and also the WLA vice chairman, expressed the importance of international cooperation in the field of basic science.
He said that it is very important for the scientists in the West and the United States to maintain continuous interaction with them in Asia and especially in China.
"China has invested a lot to develop the country's scientific infrastructure, and I believe it is most beneficial for us to communicate and cooperate with them," he added.
Also, the forum announced the establishment of the WLA Prize, which will be officially launched in 2022, with two individual awards each having a 10-million-yuan reward (about 1.56 million U.S. dollars).
Donated by Chinese enterprises, the prize will focus on supporting original basic research and encouraging global scientists to better participate in and serve the common well-being of all humankind.
Roger Kornberg, WLA chairman and the 2006 Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry, said that the WLA Prize proves that China attaches great importance to the development of basic science research, and he is confident that it will become a world's top science award.
He also shows a positive attitude towards the prospects of the cooperation between China and the international science community.
“We work with our colleagues around the United States and Europe in different universities. As I know, the extent of such international cooperation between science in China and elsewhere has doubled in the last 10 years," he said.
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