Wang Xiaoyun

Wang Xiaoyun, with the Institute for Advanced Study of Tsinghua University, recently won the 2019 Future Science Prize along with three other scientists. The prize is the first Chinese non-governmental science award initiated by a group of scientists and entrepreneurs in 2016.

Wang won the prize in mathematics and computer science for her contributions to cryptography where she innovated methods to reveal the weaknesses of widely used hash functions and created a new generation of hash function standards.

Wang has been a professor with the institute since 2005 and in 2017, she was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Shao Feng, a senior researcher from Beijing's National Institute of Biological Sciences, was awarded the prize in life sciences. Wang Yifang, Director of the Institute for High-Energy Physics under the CAS, and Kam-Biu Luk, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, won the prize in physical sciences.

The prize is given in three categories with $1 million for each award.