The award ceremony of the 2019 Xplorer Prize, a non-governmental award for scientists and technicians aged 45 and below who work full-time on the Chinese mainland, was held in Beijing on November 2. Four of the award winners were women scientists.

They are Liu Ying, a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), under Peking University; Fu Qiaomei, head of the Ancient DNA Lab of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wang Shuxiao, a professor at the School of Environment and head of the teaching and research institute of air pollution control of Tsinghua University; and Zhou Huanping, a researcher and doctoral supervisor at Peking University.

The Xplorer Prize was initiated by the Tencent Foundation and 10-plus Chinese scientists, with an initial funding of one billion yuan (US $145 million). The award is granted to 50 young researchers in the science sector every year. Each of them will be granted funds for research annually for five consecutive years, with a total funding of three million yuan (US $434,782.6).

Liu, an award winner in the field of life science, became a doctoral supervisor at the IMM when she was only 29. She was selected as an international research scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and published papers in the world's top academic journals Cell, Nature and Science. She has worked as head of the mitochondria and aging research at the IMM since 2014, and she was included in the list of the applicants who could receive funds from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in August 2019.

Fu won the prize for her achievements in co-developing the nuclear DNA capture technology that successfully obtained the genome of a man who lived 40,000 years ago in China. The man from Tianyuan Cave in Beijing becomes the oldest individual whose genome researchers have obtained in East Asia. In 2017, she was selected as an international research scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Wang specializes in the formation and control of the regional atmospheric combined pollution and the prevention and control of mercury pollution. She was selected as a Distinguished Professor in the Changjiang Scholars Program in 2014.

Zhou developed a series of chemical processes that made perovskite-based solar cells more efficient and cheaper to produce.

Dedicated to the energy and environmental area, Wang and Zhou are working to help people understand the truth of air pollution correctly and they are trying to develop high-efficient clean energy with low-cost.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)