President Xi Jinping gives the nation’s top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen on Wednesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

President Xi Jinping presented the nation’s top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen and leading nuclear scientist Wang Dazhong on Wednesday in recognition of their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, conferred the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award on the two academicians during a grand ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The two scientists then joined Party and State leaders in presenting certificates to the recipients of State awards in natural science, technological invention, scientific and technological progress and international science and technology cooperation.

Premier Li Keqiang said in a speech at the ceremony that innovation in science and technology has been a pillar of the nation’s pandemic response and economic recovery. He highlighted the need to seize historic opportunities from the new scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, improve China’s innovation capacity across the board, spur the potential for social creativity and strive to attain a high level of technological self-reliance.

Aircraft design expert Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong.

Gu Songfen, born in 1930 in Jiangsu province, is a renowned aircraft designer. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He was in charge of the aerodynamic design of the Shenyang JJ-1, China’s first jet trainer, and of the Shenyang J-8 and J-8-II, China’s first high-speed, high-altitude interceptors, laying the foundations of subsonic and supersonic aircraft design in the country. Gu is the only academician of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering in the national aviation industry.

Wang Dazhong, born in 1935 in Hebei province, is an internationally renowned nuclear energy scientist and educator. He graduated from the Department of Engineering Physics at Tsinghua University in 1958 and received his doctoral degree in natural sciences from RWTH Aachen University in Germany in 1982. He has served as the director and chief engineer of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, as well as the president of the university. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.