VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis has appointed new members to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, including the epidemiologist, Chen Chien-jen, credited with handling Taiwan’s response to the Covid-19 coronavirus [SARS-CoV-2]; chemist and professor of environmental studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Susan Solomon, a global expert in atmospheric chemistry credited with helping to explain the cause of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctic in the 1980s; and Nobel laureate in physics, Donna Strickland, an optics physicist and professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Chen, a Catholic was a member of the board of trustees of Fu Jen Catholic University and taught there from 2009 to 2015. He also is a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
After earning a master’s degree in public health from National Taiwan University, he earned his doctorate in epidemiology and human genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 1982. His research has focused on the long-term health hazards of environmental agents, such as arsenic, and on cancer risks of various hepatitis viruses.
When he finished his term as vice president, he returned to Taipei’s Academia Sinica as a professor and researcher.
Solomon worked for decades at the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, conducted research in Antarctica and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president, Al Gore.
She is the founding director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, a university-wide coalition of experts working to address the challenges posed by climate change.
Strickland, who was born in Guelph, Ontario, earned a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester, New York, and conducted research there with Gérard Mourou with whom she won the Nobel Prize in physics for their development of chirped pulse amplification.
She has worked as a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and at Princeton University’s Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Opto-electronic Materials. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations.
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, founded in 1603, brings together top scientists from a variety of disciplines to study and discuss the latest developments in scientific research and to advise the Vatican on matters involving science. The members, many of whom are Nobel laureates, are chosen for their expertise; many of the almost 80 members are not Catholic.
