The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) announced the election of five Academia Sinica Academicians among its 2010 new members on October 19. In addition, it presented an award to a Distinguished Research Fellow of Academia Sinica. The 21st General Meeting of TWAS was held from October 19 to 22 in Hyderabad‎, India.

The five new TWAS members are, in order of announcement, Academician Meng-Chao Yao, a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology; Academician Kenneth K. Wu, President of the National Health Research Institutes; Academician Paul T. P. Ho, a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Academician Cyrus C. Y. Chu, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Economics and Chairman of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research; and Academician Ovid J. L. Tzeng, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Linguistics. Academician Tzeng currently serves as a Minister without Portfolio.

In addition to the elected members, Dr. Soo-Chen Cheng, a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Molecular Biology, was awarded the TWAS Prize in Biology, together with Dr. Satyajit Mayor from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India.

Academician Meng-Chao Yao was elected for being “among the first to discover and define the global DNA rearrangement processes in Tetrahymena, and revealing the mechanistic details of some of these processes”, and for linking “some of these mechanisms to human cancer progression”. His major research contributions span from chromosome structure and function, nucleolus function and genome instability to RNA interference.

Academician Kenneth K. Wu was elected for: “seminal contributions to the understanding of thrombosis at the molecular level, and advances to the basic knowledge and therapeutic approaches.”  Academician Wu is an internationally respected vascular biologist who is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and previously won the President’s Scholar Award of the University of Texas Health Science Center. His research focuses on mediators of arterial thrombosis, and molecular biology and biochemistry of cyclooxygenase and nitric oxide synthase.
    Academician Paul T. P. Ho was elected for “setting up the Submillimeter Array (SMA), which jumpstarted the growth of astronomy in Taiwan”, and for helping “set up the Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMIBA), the first telescope for cosmological studies in Asia”. His research focuses on compact objects and accretion phenomena, extragalactic astronomy, interstellar medium, and formation of stars.

Academician Cyrus C. Y. Chu was elected for having “analyzed the population problem based on rich classifying criteria such as income, occupation, sex and bequests”, and for making “significant innovations in criminal sanction, legal procedure, punitive damages, constitutional philosophy and other topics”.  A worldwide leading scholar in demographic economics, Academician Chu’s research interests are population economics, law and economics, public and regional economics.

Academician Ovid J. L. Tzeng was elected for “establishing a dual-system working model for human memory”, and for his phase retrieval model of temporal coding that “specifies how temporal information is encoded and later retrieved via an organized rehearsal network”. In neurolinguistics, his cross-linguistic reading research details language universals as well as linguistic-specific properties of brain processes across different writing systems, using evidence from neuro-images showing spatio-temporal dynamic patterns.

Dr. Soo-Chen Cheng was awarded the biology prize for her “contribution to understanding the molecular mechanism of pre-mRNA splicing”. Her current research focuses on mechanism of the pre-mRNA splicing reaction.

TWAS is the world's leading academy for scientists from the developing world and an autonomous international organization, aiming to promote scientific excellence and capacity in the South for science-based sustainable development. Founded and based in 1983 in Trieste in Italy, TWAS also sponsors a large number of research and training programs for scientists from the developing world. The 58 members newly elected this year bring the membership of TWAS to exactly 1000 of the most distinguished scientists worldwide. More than 300 scholars from 54 countries were expected to attend the 21th General Meeting of TWAS this year.
Related websites:
http://twas.ictp.it/news-in-home-page/news/twas-announces-2010-prize-winners
http://twas.ictp.it/mbrs/members-elected-2010