Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 Shaw Prize

The Shaw Prize, a prestigious international award that is often referred to as “Nobel of the East,” is bestowed annually upon worthy scholars in three categories: Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences.

The winners of the 2015 Shaw Prize were announced at a press conference in Hong Kong on June 1, 2015. The details of the Shaw laureates as described in the original press release are as follows:

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy

This prize was awarded to William J Borucki, Principal Investigator for the Kepler mission, Ames Research Center, NASA, USA, for his conceiving and leading the Kepler mission which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors.

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine

The prize in this category was awarded in equal shares to Bonnie L Bassler, Squibb Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA; and E Peter Greenberg Professor of Microbiology, University of Washington, USA, for their discovery of quorum sensing, a process whereby bacteria communicate with each other and which offers innovative ways to interfere with bacterial pathogens or to modulate the microbiome for health applications.

The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences   

This prize was awarded in equal shares to Gerd Faltings, Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Germany; and Henryk Iwaniec, New Jersey Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University, USA, for their introduction and development of fundamental tools in number theory, allowing them as well as others to resolve some longstanding classical problems.

This will be the twelfth year that the Prize has been awarded, and the laureates will be presented with a $1 million cash award in a presentation ceremony on Thursday, 24 September 2015.

Congratulations to all the winners!