The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) 2008 list of newly elected members, released November 11th, includes two Academia Sinica Academicians.
Academician Pan-Chyr Yang, Dean, and Professor of Internal Medicine at National Taiwan University College of Medicine was elected to the area of Medical and Health Sciences; and Academician Der-Tsai Lee, Distinguished Research Fellow of Academia Sinica's Institute of Information Science was elected to the area of Engineering Sciences.
In addition, Dr. Jei-Fu Shaw, President of National Chung-Hsing University, was awarded the 2008 TWAS Prize in Agricultural Sciences, and Dr. Chun-Hung Lin, Research Fellow of the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica was elected a 2008 TWAS Young Affiliate, an honor given each year to exceptional scientists below the age of 40.
The announcements were made at the TWAS 25th Anniversary annual general meeting held from November 10th to 13th in Mexico City.
In addition to heading National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Dr. Pan-Chyr Yang is also the President of the Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. His major research interests are pulmonary and critical care medicine, lung cancer genomics and molecular biology as well as microarray gene expression technology. His group has identified several novel lung cancer metastasis-associated genes and biomarkers that may have clinical potential for personalized therapy of lung cancer.
Dr. Der-Tsai Lee's research interests include design and analysis of algorithms, computational geometry, VLSI layout and systems, bioinformatics, digital libraries, software security, web-based computing and algorithm visualization. He has published over 150 papers in scientific journals, serves on the editorial boards of several journals, and holds several patents in the US and Taiwan.
Prof. Jei-Fu Shaw's expertise includes: functional genes and plant biotechnology, production of industrial products and functional food from agriculture produce by biocatalysis and protein engineering and biotechnology of lipases.
Dr. Chun-Hung Lin's research area is chemical biology and drug discovery. His current research interests include: glycosidase and glycosyltransferase, glutathionespermidine synthetase/amidase and glycal chemistry.
TWAS is the academy of sciences for the developing world. It is an autonomous international organization, founded in 1983 in Trieste, Italy, by a distinguished group of scientists from the South under the leadership of the late Nobel laureate Abdus Salam of Pakistan. It was officially launched by the secretary-general of the United Nations in 1985. It currently has 874 members from 90 countries, more than 85% of whom are citizens of the South.
The main mission of TWAS is to promote scientific excellence and capacity in the South for science-based sustainable development.
