This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. To mark the occasion, we are publishing a series of reports celebrating the city’s achievements in different aspects over the past four decades.
A TOTAL of 11 laboratories named after Nobel laureates have been set up in Shenzhen, providing scientific and technological support for the city’s social and economic development in recent years.
Shenzhen officially initiated Nobel Laureate Lab program in 2017 to build up basic research capability by relying on universities, research institutes, public institutions and enterprises to invite Nobel Prize, Turin Prize and Fields Medal winners to jointly set up laboratories. The labs will receive a large amount of subsidies and the research-active scientists need to work at Shenzhen laboratories for at least 30 days a year.
According to agreements, the labs must be a sole institute on the Chinese mainland and the first contract will be valid for at least five years. The research teams introduced from outside of the city should have at least five core members. Shenzhen Grubbs Research Institute, a research institute named after Robert H. Grubbs, a Nobel laureate in chemistry in 2005, was the first of its kind to have been named after a Nobel laureate.
The lab was set up to be a world-leading research center in new pharmaceuticals, new materials and new energy resources. Grubbs is a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in the United States and co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on olefin metathesis.
Before the end of 2017, five labs named after Nobel laureates had been set up in the city. They included Shenzhen Geim Graphene Research Center headed by Andre Geim, a winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Kobilka Institute of Innovative Drug Discovery headed by Brian Kobilka, a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz.
In partnership with a Shenzhen enterprise, Shuji Nakamura Laser Lighting Laboratory was led by the Nobel Prize winner in Physics (2014) for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes. The institute engages in energy-efficient LED lighting research.
Between 2018 and 2019, six labs were set up and named after: Erwin Neher, a winner in Physiology or Medicine in 1991, Barry Marshall , a winner in Physiology or Medicine in 2005, Efim Isaakovich Zelmanov, a Fields Medal winner in 1994, and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, a 2016 winner in Chemistry, Joseph Sifakis, a Turin Prize winner in 2007, and David Patterson, a Turin Prize winner in 2017.