Press statement: Vivian Wing-Wah YAM appointed president of IOCD

Professor Vivian Wing-Wah YAM [Figure 1] from Hong Kong, China, has been elected as the next President of the International Organization for Chemical Sciences in Development (IOCD).

Figure 1. Professor Vivian Wing-Wah YAM. (Retrieved from: http://web.hku.hk/~wwyam/yam/homepage/)

Professor Yam is IOCD’s first woman President. She follows in the footsteps of the two outstanding scientists who have previously held this position: IOCD’s founding President, the Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg (USA), served from 1981 until 1992, when he was succeeded by the Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn (France), who stepped down at the end of 2021.

Professor Yam is an elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2001), Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (2006), International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (2012), Foreign Member of Academia Europaea (2015), and Founding Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences (2015). Educated in chemistry at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and receiving BSc (1985) and Ph.D. (1988) degrees, Professor Yam is Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy at HKU, where she has served as Head of Chemistry (2000-05) and, since 2021, Interim Dean of Science. Her research work focuses on inorganic/organometallic syntheses, supramolecular chemistry, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular functional materials.

Professor Yam’s career has been marked by many major awards for her highly distinguished scientific contributions, among which she is a Laureate of the UNESCO-L’Oréal Award for Women in Science (2011). In 2020 she was awarded the Porter Medal by the European Photochemistry Association, the Inter-American Photochemistry Society and the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association, for her contributions to photochemistry; and in 2021, she was honoured with designation as the inaugural Pioneer in Energy Research by ACS Energy and Fuels and has had a Special Issue of this journal dedicated to her.

Professor Yam has shown great dedication to sustainable development and to advancing the role of women in science. Both of these are core to IOCD's mission, to promote the central role of the chemical sciences in meeting the great challenges that the world faces in the 21st Century - in particular, in achieving a sustainable and equitable future for all. Professor Yam has also been a strong supporter of the role of women in science, and her election as President follows the recent appointment of other new women Members, so that women now form the majority on IOCD’s governing body for the first time in its history.