DEAN
Professor P Chiu
院長
趙寶貽教授
FACULTY SECRETARY
Mrs A O M Tsang
院務主任
曾謝靄文女 士
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
香港大學
理學院
Press Release
HKU Professor Guochun Zhao becomes the first geologist to
receive the Khwarizimi International Award (First Class)
March 9, 2016
Professor Guochun Zhao of the Department of Earth Sciences, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has
been selected as one of the laureates for the 29th Khwarizmi International Award (KIA), and received a firstclass prize at the KIA ceremony held in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on March 7, 2016. Professor Zhao’s
research work for this award is "A Paleo-Mesoproterozoic supercontinent and its record in North China",
which led to two original and important scientific achievements: (1) first recognition of global-scale 2.0-1.8
billion year-old collisional events that assembled nearly all continents on Earth to form a single
supercontinent; and (2) the discovery of two 1.95-1.85 billion year-old Himalaya-type collisional belts
(called the Khondalite Belt and Trans-North China Orogen) in North China. In the presence of Ambassadors
in Iran, scientists and representatives of disparate fields, Iran’s Minister of Science, Research and
Technology, Mohammad Farhadi presented the awards to the Laureates individually, on behalf of the
President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. Professor Zhao is the first geologist to win this award.
HKU President Peter Mathieson and the Senior Management Team congratulated Professor Zhao on being
named a KIA Laureate: “Guochun’s colleagues and I are very delighted to see him receive yet another
international accolade in recognition of his distinguished achievements in the field. That the first geologist to
receive this award should be from HKU is further evidence of the University’s impact and research standing
in the world.”
Professor Zhao is extremely delighted by the honour. “I’m deeply honoured to have received this award,
which is a reflection of scientific achievements made by my research group, not only by myself. I would also
like to thank the University, Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the National Natural Science
Foundation of China for their long-term financial support for my research” he said.
Established in 1987, the Khwarizmi International Award is named in memory of the achievements of
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. The Award seeks
to recognize the efforts made by researchers, innovators and inventors from all over the world and to
appreciate their invaluable achievements and contributions to various fields of science and technology. The
Khwarizmi International Award is awarded on annual basis. A total of nine outstanding scholars were
selected as the 29th KIA Laureates (Foreign Section), including those from China, USA, Sweden, Japan,
Germany, Australia and Mexico. Although this award has been presented to many outstanding scientists
since 1987, it is for the first time to be presented to a geologist. For details, please visit ：
http://khwarizmi.ir/kia/content/khwarizmi-international-award-29th-session-2016
Biography of Professor Zhao Guochun
Professor Guochun Zhao is a Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. His major findings
include the discoveries of two 1.95-1.85 billion years (Ga) old collisional belts in North China, and the first
proposal of global scale 2.0-1.8 Ga collisional events leading to the assembly of a supercontinent. According
to ISI Web of Knowledge, Professor Zhao’s record in the field of GEOSCIENCES includes 260 papers cited
by others for 15,000 times (h-index = 76), ranking number 8 among 3291 top 1% geoscientists. He is also
one of the nine HKU academics named amongst the“Highly Cited Researchers 2015” by Thomson Reuters.
Professor Zhao is the Editor-in-Chief of Precambrian Research, and he won the State Natural Science Award
(Second Class) in 2014. In the same year, he was elected to be the Fellow of GSA and the President of the
International Association of Gondwana Research. For more about Professor Zhao, please visit
http://www.earthsciences.hku.hk/people/academic-staff/prof-zhao-g-c .
Image Download
http://www.scifac.hku.hk/news/media?page=1
Professor Guochun Zhao of the Department of Earth Sciences
receives the 29th Khwarizimi International Award (First Class).
Professor Zhao and other Laureates.
Group photo of Iranian leaders and the Laureates.
Ceremony.
Iranian media interviews Professor Zhao after the
Professor Guochun Zhao is the first to recognise the global-scale 2.0-1.8 billion year-old
collisional events that form a single supercontinent.
Media enquiries:
Communication and Public Affairs Office Ms Rhea Leung (Tel: 2857 8555/ 9022 7446; email:
[email protected]) or
Faculty of Science Ms Cindy Chan (tel: 3917 5286/ 6703 0212; email: [email protected] ).
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