Date: Oct. 1, 2021

Source: International Corporation and Exchange Office, Institute for Advanced and Applied Chemical Synthesis

In a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 30, Martin Banwell, director of JNU's Institute for Advanced and Applied Chemical Synthesis, received the 2021 Chinese Government Friendship Award, the highest honor the government bestows on foreign experts for their contributions to China's development. Li Keqiang, a member of the standing committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee and premier of the State Council, met with the award-winners and fully affirmed the foreign experts' important contributions to China's modernization, and to friendly cooperation between China and foreign countries.

Banwell was recommended by the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee. He is the second JNU expert honored.

(Prof. Martin Banwell, second row, fourth from right)

Born in New Zealand, Banwell was director of Australian National University's Research School of Chemistry from 2008 to 2013. He became a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2004 and named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018. 

Influenced by his father, a senior geologist for the United Nations who has been studying Chinese for more than 20 years, Banwell began working in Guangdong in 2014. From 2016 to 2019, as the Pearl River Scholars Chair professor at JNU, he devoted himself to the construction of double first-class pharmacy disciplines and helped train 11 postgraduates. Banwell joined JNU as a full-time teacher at the end of 2018 and was appointed the first dean of the Institute of Advanced and Applied Chemistry Synthesis. Since then he has been approved for a national talent project, trained 13 doctoral and master's degree candidates, published 39 research papers, promoted talent recruitment from overseas, and organized several large-scale international conferences and high-level academic lectures. He has also cooperated with a number of enterprises in Guangdong and achieved significant social benefits.