The Sunney Chan lecture was established at Academia Sinica in 2003 to honor Sunney for his six years of dedicated service to Academia Sinica and Taiwan during his term as Vice President of Research at Academia Sinica. Sunney took an early retirement from Caltech in 1997, where he spent essentially the bulk of his professional career, to work in Taiwan. Aside from rebuilding the Institute of Chemistry in the modern image, he established the Taiwan International Graduate Program and led the development of biotechnology in Taiwan. Under the auspices of the National Science Council, Sunney established the National Research Program in Genomic Medicine to promote basic and applied research in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics within the life science community in Taiwan. He also led the effort to create a Research Center for Genomics at Academia Sinica. It was largely through Sunney’s vision and hard work that Taiwan has now in place the research infrastructure to promote and support research in modern life sciences as well as biomedical sciences on this Island.
As expected, Sunney has also been active in the chemical community, promoting modernization of the undergraduate curriculum in chemistry, raising the standards of graduate research in the national universities, nurturing young scholars and junior faculty, and pointing the way to improving the infrastructure for basic and applied research in the molecular sciences. He has been particularly inspirational to young scientists, and the generosity, with which he has shared his chemistry, insights about science, wisdom on life, and his knowledge about wine, food, gourmet dining, and restaurants, is well known throughout the community here.
In recognition of these efforts, President Yuan T. Lee has established the Sunney Chan Lecture in Chemical Biology in order to bring to the Taiwan Scientific Community annually an eminent scientist who best exemplifies Sunney’s enthusiasm as a scientist, teacher and mentor, and his devotion to public service.