On March 13th, the first Guangdong Friendship Award winners were officially announced, with four individuals from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT)  being selected.

The Guangdong Friendship Award, established by the Guangdong Provincial Government, is an honorary award to recognize foreigners who have made outstanding contributions to the economic and social development of Guangdong and its foreign exchanges. The award is granted every three years, with 2022 marking the first selection process. A total of 49 foreign experts and international friends from 23 countries were awarded, including eight from Shenzhen.

The winners include Helmut Kettenmann, Director of the Department of Neurobiology at the School of Life and Health Sciences of SIAT; Horst Arthur Vogel, Chief Scientist of the Computer-Aided Drug Design Research Center at the SIAT ; John Roger Speakman, Chief Scientist of the Energy Metabolism and Reproduction Research Center at the SIAT ; and Diana Boraschi, Director of the Laboratory of Inflammation and Vaccines. Vogel, Speakman, and Boraschi were also awarded the Chinese Government Friendship Award in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.

SIAT has always practiced the development strategy of "talent-driven growth," insisting on attracting talent globally. On the one hand, SIAT has focused on talent work, providing comprehensive and warm services for all talents, including foreign experts. In the past three years, more than 50 foreign experts have been selected for the National High-end Foreign Expert program, more than 30 have been granted Chinese green cards, and 16 have been recognized as high-level talents from abroad, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan by the Guangdong Province. On the other hand, SIAT has continuously optimized the talent environment for foreign experts, treating their "key small issues" as "top priorities," such as coordinating and ensuring the urgent arrival of over 20 foreign experts and their families of national major talent level in the past year.

Moreover, SIAT attaches great importance to leveraging the leading and radiating role of foreign experts, continuously building an innovative ecosystem for foreign talents, focusing on the development of overseas talent channels and the enhancement of cross-border collaborative innovation capabilities, and strengthening the introduction and cultivation of high-level talents to create an international high-level talent team.

Currently, SIAT has built an international innovative talent team with an average age of 33, boasting 153 national talents, over 1,000 Chinese Academy of Sciences and provincial and municipal talents, and 62 scholars included in the global top 2% scientist list. The institute continuously strengthens scientific research, talent cultivation, discipline construction, and other exchanges and cooperation with domestic and international research institutions, enhancing its clustering effect as an international innovation talent hub.