TANG TAO, vice president of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), has been added to this year’s shortlist of potential newly added members to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

Among the 157 candidates on the list, nine are from Guangdong Province. The only one from Shenzhen is Tang, a world-renowned mathematician. In May 2005, Tang was hired as the chair professor at the Department of Mathematics and the vice president of SUSTech.

Currently, most full-time academicians in the CAS and CAE (the Chinese Academy of Engineering) in Shenzhen are employed by universities. Comparatively speaking, there is a shortage of these high-level talents in Shenzhen. According to a document recently released by the Shenzhen Municipal Government, soaring housing prices and higher cost of living are the main factors that daunt high-level talents. The lack of high-caliber innovative talents hampers the city’s competitiveness.

In Shenzhen, there are only 228 members of the National 1,000 Experts Plan, less than one-10th of that in Beijing, and one-fourth of Shanghai. The number of full-time academicians in the CAS and CAE and State-level high-caliber young talents is 20 and 17 respectively, far less than that in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

In order to build up a talent pool, Shenzhen is scheduled to introduce around 10 strategic scientists and implement a plan for recruiting 100 academicians. The city intends to gather a batch of top-level discipline leaders, taking in about 300 leaders in basic disciplines. By the end of 2020, 100 overseas high-level innovative teams, 2,000 overseas high-level talents, 1,500 new national high-level talents and 600,000 new technical talents will have been introduced.

(Zhang Yu)