On September 20th, the 7th "Science Exploration Award" ceremony was held in Shenzhen, where 50 award-winning scientists walked the red carpet like stars, stepped onto the podium, and shared the glory under the spotlight with their families, bringing their scientific dreams of exploring humanity's "big questions."
According to reports, this year's winners' research encompasses cutting-edge breakthroughs including artificial retinal photoreceptor repair, generation and manipulation of non-Abelian anyons, photoelectric-enabled artificial enzymes, searching for life signatures in Martian rock coatings, second-level regulation of plant auxin, neurological deafness drug development, trustworthy visual computing, carbon dioxide conversion applications in manned enclosed spaces, planetary mobile detection robots, and disaster prevention and control for submarine tunnel joints. These research areas focus on original innovation, respond to major national needs, and venture deep into the "no man's land" of science and technology.
According to available information, this philanthropic award is funded by Tencent, operated by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation, and features scientist-led talent selection. It was jointly launched by more than ten renowned scientists including Yang Zhenning, Rao Yi, and Shi Yigong, together with Tencent founder Ma Huateng. It is currently one of the highest-funded youth technology talent support projects in China. Each winner will receive a total of 3 million yuan in prize money over five consecutive years. Beyond this, the Science Exploration Award continues to operate with the goal of supporting China's top young scientists during their most explosive years, encouraging them to challenge, explore, and climb the Mount Everest of science.
At the award ceremony, Yan Ning, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, founding dean of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology for Medicine, director of Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, and member of the "Science Exploration Award" management committee, revealed that she once posed the soul-searching question "How do you view life?" to Ma Huateng via WeChat, while also offering suggestions about life to Ma Huateng. "I also gave him (Ma Huateng) a suggestion that since Tencent has a very important segment in esports, I wondered if he could mobilize global players to virtually simulate life in a system starting from the simplest molecules."
According to introductions, "encouraging originality" is the positioning of funding by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation, with this encouragement of originality running through every round of "Science Exploration Award" evaluations. In 2025, from peer review to re-examination to final evaluation, evaluation experts paid more attention to examining the originality of future research work. "Why can you accomplish work that predecessors couldn't?" "What original methods do you have?" "Where are your innovation points?" At the final evaluation site, these were the most common "soul-searching questions" faced by candidates. Over seven years, the Science Exploration Award has funded 347 scientists. In the year of winning and afterward, 11 winners had research achievements selected for the annual "China's Top Ten Scientific Advances," published over 40 papers in top global scientific journals "Cell," "Nature," and "Science," and they have become the "main force" on the frontlines of China's technological innovation.
Notably, this year's award ceremony set three historical records: the highest number of young scientists and female scientists in history, with more regions and institutions having their own winners.
According to introductions, this year's "Rising Star Quota" setting, while maintaining the evaluation principle of preferring quality over quantity, provided one "Rising Star Quota" in each of the 10 funding fields. This arrangement attracted more young people to apply, with 261 young scientists applying for awards this year, accounting for 21%, nearly double last year's figure. Among the 50 winners, 13 are young scientists, including 6 from the post-1990s generation. In the information electronics field, 3 out of 6 winners are young scientists. Additionally, the "Science Exploration Award" respects the real situation of female researchers and values their growth and development. Last year, the award relaxed the age application threshold for female scientists (males 45 and under, females 48 and under), and this year made similar adjustments for "Rising Star Quotas" (males 35 and under, females 38 and under). Meanwhile, efforts were made to increase the proportion of female evaluators at all evaluation stages. This year's number of female winners reached a historical high of 9, accounting for 18%, showing an encouraging trend.
"(This year's situation) gives young women aspiring to engage in scientific research work great encouragement: she can do it, so can I. This path has been walked by predecessors, and it's not that difficult. This is a very important signal," said Yan Ning.
Furthermore, following the award's expansion from 9 to 10 fields, this year's winners covered broader regions and institutions. The 50 winners came from 33 institutions in 15 cities (compared to 28 institutions in 13 cities last year). This also reflects the continuous expansion of the breadth and depth of basic research layout nationwide and the continuous optimization of the innovation landscape.
The "Science Exploration Award" provides a "methodology" for social capital's "long-termism" support of basic scientific research. "Establishing the Science Exploration Award and funding the New Cornerstone Science Foundation are our long-term commitments to scientific endeavors. This persistence has nothing to do with business," said Xi Dan, Senior Vice President of Tencent, in an interview with media. Tencent's original intention in participating in launching the "Science Exploration Award" was to "take from society and give back to society." "Tencent's development has also benefited from China's reform and opening-up. As a representative of Chinese technology companies, Tencent has extensively absorbed young people trained by China in the technology field, enabling rapid development. So when we decided to establish the SSV (Sustainable Social Value) division, we chose several directions, immediately making funding basic scientific research one of the core directions in Tencent's social value creation. This endeavor has no commercial requirements or commercial return purposes. From our perspective, the core idea is to leverage the tolerance and flexibility of private capital while utilizing the innovation spirit that technology companies have always had, becoming a beneficial supplement to national technology investment. We treat this as an important matter, trying to find our methods. The Science Exploration Award has achieved certain results over the past seven years, hoping to allow outstanding young scientists to spend less time on daily necessities and more time and energy exploring the vast ocean of technology. Over seven years, we have funded 347 young scientists who have already achieved many accomplishments in their respective research positions. We look forward to them achieving even greater success in the future and making more contributions to national scientific research."