SEVERAL scientists stressed the significance of talent cultivation in China’s basic research and encouraged young people to challenge cutting-edge issues on the sidelines of the International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) held in Beijing.

Fields Medal winners Shing-Tung Yau, Caucher Birkar, Maxim Kontsevich, and Turing Award winner Andrew Chi-Chih Yao shared their views on talent cultivation and the development of basic research.

“We hope that young people can actively communicate with first-class scholars at home and abroad through this congress so that they can see how far the world’s most advanced sciences have gone, and set clear goals for themselves,” said mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, chairman of the ICBS and dean of Qiuzhen College at Tsinghua University.

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said Chinese young people are very smart, and “in fact, all they need is a little help.”

Caucher Birkar, a professor at Tsinghua University, said that in addition to the unsolved mathematical questions, the biggest challenge is the training and education of the younger generation. (Xinhua)