After being awarded for the distinguished papers from the “Fifteenth Symposium on Recent Advances in Cellular and Molecular Biology” in March, the Institute of Life Sciences was recognized with the awards for the “Group of Distinguished Bulletin Papers of 22nd Joint Annual Conference of Biomedical Sciences.” The winners are Geng-huei Li, first-year graduate of the Institute of Life Sciences(ILS); the alumni of ILS Yung-tsang Lin, Min-yen Chang who are serving in the military; and their advisor Dr. Yao-hong Chen. They were honorable mentioned and rewarded for 5,000 NTD for their bulletin papers, “Nuclear factor Y-beta subunit (NF-YB) is required for cartilages organization in zebrafish embryos” and “Capsulin, a novel neural crest cell marker, is required for craniofacial organization in zebrafish.” They will be awarded at the “Sixteenth Symposium on Recent Advances in Cellular and Molecular Biology” on Jan. 24 next year.

This yearly symposium is the biggest national annual conference in the field of physiology, pharmacology and anatomy. The participants were from the academic organizations of biomedical research, including NTU, NYMU, NTHU, NCKU, NDMC and NCU, Academia Sinica, and the research center of Taipei Veterans General Hospital. There were 879 pieces of bulletin papers, and among them only 23 pieces were selected as the distinguished bulletin papers. Yao-hong Chen indicates that we should be proud of such a honor, for among the awarded 23 groups, we did the works with limited funds and resources, but our achievement is recognized as good as those form national institutes. Geng-huei Li, whose major is chemistry, remarks that “I’m so happy that our three-year of hard works won the recognition!” (~ Karen Chang )